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University  of  Calttt^fnia 
Department  of  University  Extension 


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University  of  California 
Department  of  University  Extension 


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THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON 


A  SKETCH,  POLITICAL  AND  MILITARY 


BY 

JOHN  CODMAN  ROPES 

MEMBER  OF  THE  MASSACHUSETTS  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY,  THE    MILITARY  HISTORICAL 

SOCIETY  OF  MASSACHUSETTS,  THE    HARVARD    HISTORICAL  SOCIETY  ;    FELLOW 

OF  THE  AMERICAN  ACADEMY  OF  ARTS  AND  SOENCES ;    AUTHOR  OF 

"  THE  ARMY  UNDER    POPE,"  IN  THE  SCRIBNER  SERIES  OF 

"campaigns  OF  THE  CIVIL  WAR" 


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BOSTON  AND   NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND   COMPANY 


HlSTCPi/ 1 


Copyright,  1885, 
Br  JOHN  CODMAN  ROPEa 

All  rigfits  reserved, 

^  too  I 

/    "  2  O   "  o  *>/ 
SIXTEENTH  IMPRESSION 


T7ie  Riverside  Press,  Camhridge,  Mass.,  U.  S.  A. 
Electrotyped  and  Printed  by  H.  O.  Houghton  &  Company. 


PKEFACE  TO  THE  TWELFTH  EDITION. 


I  READILY  embrace  the  opportunity  afforded 
me  by  the  printing  of  this  edition,  to  make  a  few 
corrections  in  my  account  of  the  campaign  of 
Waterloo.  Since  the  book  was  first  pubhshed, 
in  1885,  I  have  had  occasion  to  make  a  careful 
study  of  this  campaign,  the  results  of  which  I 
have  embodied  in  a  separate  work.  The  changes 
I  have  made  in  this  edition,  while  not  numerous, 
are  of  some  importance. 

I  have  (on  page  249)  stated  my  present  belief 
that  Napoleon  did,  on  the  afternoon  of  the  15th 
of  June,  order  Marshal  Ney  to  seize  Quatre  Bras 
that  evening.  I  have  (on  pp.  250,  251,  260) 
shown  why  the  Duke  of  Wellington  delayed  or- 
dering the  assembHng  of  his  army  at  Quatre 
Bras,  and  have  stated  that  his  orders  for  this 
movement  were  given  about  or  soon  after  mid- 
night of  the  15th,  and  not  when  he  arrived  at 
Quatre  Bras  the  next  forenoon. 

I  state  (on  page  257)  that  it  was  the  bearer 
of  the  two  p.  M.  order  to  Marshal  Ney,  who  took 
it  upon  himself  to  order  d'Erlon's  corps  toward 
St.  Amand.  I  have  also  given  (on  page  263) 
what  I  have  now  no  doubt  was  the  real  reason 

3731  cf  9 


IV  PREFACE. 

of  Napoleon's  dictating  the  famous  Bertrand 
order,  namely,  that  the  news,  —  which  arrived 
after  he  had  given  Grouchy  the  verbal  orders,  — 
that  a  Prussian  corps  had  been  seen  at  Gembloux, 
made  the  Emperor  think  it  by  no  means  unlikely 
that  Bliicher  meant  to  join  the  English  and  fight 
another  battle. 

Lastly,  I  have  rectified  (on  pp.  281,  282)  the 
account  of  the  last  charge  and  repulse  of  the 
Imperial  Guard. 

The  portrait  of  Napoleon  which  is  prefixed  to 
this  volume  is  from  a  sketch  in  india  ink  taken 
in  1814.  It  once  belonged  to  a  large  collection 
of  likenesses  of  the  Emperor  made  by  the  widow 
of  General  de  Billy,  who  was  killed  at  the  battle 
of  Jena,  in  1806.  It  is  attributed  either  to  the 
Count  de  Waldeck  or  his  daughter,  both  of  whom 
were  portrait  painters  of  some  reputation  under 
the  Empire.  Other  sketches  of  Napoleon,  which 
once  belonged  to  the  same  collection,  are  in  the 
Library  of  the  Military  Historical  Society  of  Mas- 
sachusetts, where  is  also  an  account  of  the  collec- 
tion, and  of  the  acquisition  of  a  portion  of  it  by 
the  Society.  The  resemblance  between  this  por- 
trait of  Napoleon  and  that  in  Meissonier's  picture 

entitled  1814  is  striking. 

JOHN  C.   ROPES. 

99  Mount  Vernon  Street, 
10th  January,  1805. 


INTRODUCTION. 


The  Lectures  whicli  are  published  m  this  vol- 
ume were  delivered  iu  Boston,  under  the  auspices 
of  the  Lowell  Institute,  in  March,  1885.  Ihey 
are  now  submitted  to  the  public  mthout  substan- 
tial  alteration.     A  few  appendices  are  added. 

So  much  has  been  written   about  Napoleon 
that  the  pubHcation  of  another  book  on  his  lite 
and  work  may  seem  to  some  to  require  a  tew 
words  of  explanation.    Let  me,  then,  say,  that  m 
the  sketch  which  I  have  given  of  Napoleons 
foreign  and  domestic  pohcy,  I  have  chiefly  pro- 
posed to  point  out  what  I  conceive  to  have  been 
the  real  nature  of  the  contest  in  which  he  played 
so   prominent   a  part,   and  the    actual   political 
capacity  at  that  time  of  the  peoples  over  whom 
he   ruled    or   whose  institutions   he    shaped,     i 
have  not  undertaken  to  write  a  new  history,  but 
simply  to  indicate  the  lines  upon  which  a  new 
history  might  be  written.     The  task  of  rectify- 
ing the  fundamental  notions  with  which  nearly 
all  historians  have  approached  the  study  of  the 
epoch  of  Napoleon  is  the  task  which  I  proposed 
to  myself. 


vi  INTRODUCTION. 

I  have,  therefore,  endeavored  to  point  out 
clearly  the  distinction  between  the  extension  of 
personal  liberty,  the  removal  of  abuses,  the  abo- 
lition of  privileges  and  disabilities,  and  the  like 
legal  and  social  changes,  on  the  one  hand,  and 
the  acquisition  and  enjoyment  of  political  power 
by  the  people,  on  the  other.  These  results  are 
very  often  confounded,  but  they  are  really  very 
different  thmgs. 

I  have  also  called  attention  to  the  fact  that, 
where  political  rights  are  conferred  upon  popu- 
lations whose  previous  political  experience  has 
in  no  wise  fitted  them  for  the  exercise  of  those 
rights,  they  will  continue,  in  spite  of  the  most 
advanced  constitutions  and  laws,  to  be  subject 
to  somebody  or  other,  as  completely  as  before 
such  rio-hts  were  conferred. 

o 

Accordingly,  I  have  endeavored  to  show  that 
the  task  of  the  French  Revolution  was  a  very 
different  one  from  what  it  has  been  generally 
supposed  to  be  by  historians  and  writers  of  the 
liberal  school.  The  Revolution  undoubtedly  did 
abolish  the  great  and  crying  abuses,  and  it  in- 
troduced important  improvements  in  legislation. 
It  gave,  in  fact,  to  the  populations  of  the  west 
of  Europe  much  better  administrative  govern- 
ments than  any  they  had  ever  enjoyed  before. 
But,  suddenly  to  transform  those  populations, 
whether  by  its  convulsions  or  its  enactments,  into 
self-governing  communities,  to  confer  in  a  mo- 
ment upon  the  bourgeois  and  peasant  of   the 


INTRODUCTION.  vii 

continent  the  political  capacity  inherited  by  the 
English  freeholder  and  the  American  farmer, 
was,  in  the  nature  of  things,  impossible.  Once 
let  a  clear-headed  man  get  hold  of  this  distinc- 
tion, and  he  will  see  that  very  many  of  the  crit- 
icisms which  have  been  levelled  at  Napoleon's 
government  of  France  and  her  dependencies  are 
entirely  misdirected.  He  will  also,  I  think,  be  in- 
clined to  regard  it  as  a  very  fair  question  whether 
Napoleon  did  not  understand  the  political  needs 
and  capacities  of  his  generation  far  better  than 
any  of  his  critics. 

The  real  character  of  the  NajJoleonic  wars  can- 
not be  mistaken.  It  was  no  soldier's  ambition 
that  carried  the  great  conqueror  from  Madrid 
to  Moscow.  At  the  bottom  of  the  twenty  years' 
strife  was  the  "  irrepressible  conflict "  between 
liberty  and  equality  on  the  one  hand,  and  privi- 
lege and  despotism  on  the  other.  What  the  rul- 
ing classes  had  always  enjoyed  they  defended  by 
the  sword;  what  the  people  had  gained  they 
maintained  at  the  point  of  the  bayonet.  Add  to 
this,  that  Napoleon  saw  in  the  alliance  of  Russia, 
Austria,  and  Prussia  a  menace  and  a  danger  to 
the  more  liberal  and  progressive  civihzation  of 
western  Europe.  Much  of  what  he  foresaw  has 
actually  happened.  The  weight  of  this  alliance 
now  presses  heavily  against  France  herself.  There 
is  now  no  western  Germany.  That  there  is  now 
an  Italy  is  mainly  due  to  the  enlightened  sagacity 
of  another  Napoleon.     But  the  three  emperors 


viii  INTRODUCTION. 

to-day  control  the  affairs  of  the  continent.  Na- 
poleon's aim  —  the  establishment  of  a  sort  of 
federative  union,  under  the  protection  of  France, 
of  the  states  lying  west  of  the  Elbe,  the  Tyrol, 
and  the  Adriatic,  which  should  accept  the  mod- 
ern ideas  of  equality  and  toleration,  and  which 
were  thenceforth  to  be  free  to  mould  their  insti- 
tutions in  accordance  with  the  views  of  an  en- 
lightened policy  accommodated  to  the  growing 
political  capacity  of  the  populations,  free  from 
the  dictation  of  Berlin,  St.  Petersburg,  or  Vienna 
—  will  never  be  carried  out  now.  But  it  was  to 
accomplish  this  end,  to  bring  it  about  that  the 
three  great  reactionary  monarchies  should  be 
powerless  to  interfere  with  or  encroach  upon  the 
progressive  states  of  the  West,  that  French  and 
German  soldiers  fought  the  Austrian  Kaiser  at 
Wagram  and  the  Russian  Czar  at  Borodino. 
Opinions  may  differ  as  to  the  desirability  of  this 
aim,  but  when  it  is  once  clearly  conceived  as  a 
project  for  the  location  of  the  centre  of  poHtical 
power  in  the  more  enHghtened  western  states  of 
the  continent,  the  foreign  policy  of  Napoleon  — 
so  far,  that  is,  as  it  was  initiated  by  him,  and 
not  forced  upon  him  —  becomes  intelligible  and 
well  worthy  the  most  careful  consideration.  The 
truth  is,  that  Napoleon  was  not  aiming  at  the 
conquest  of  Europe,  as  has  been  so  often  said, 
but  at  such  an  adjustment  of  the  balance  of 
poHtical  power  in  Europe  as  would  definitively 
relieve  the  freer  and  more  progressive  states  of 


INTRODUCTION.  ix 

the  West  from  the  aggressions  and  the  predom- 
inant influence  of  the  three  great  military  mon- 
archies of  the  East. 

It  will  be  seen  that  there  are  many  incidents 
in  the  career  of  Napoleon  to  which  I  have  not 
adverted ;  many,  and  some  of  them,  very  Hkely, 
important,  events  in  the  history  of  the  times  of 
which  I  have  not  even  spoken.  While  some  of 
these  omissions  are  no  doubt  accidental,  by  far 
the  greater  part  are  deliberately  made.  I  have 
not  attempted  to  write  a  history,  even  an  abridged 
history.  I  have  confined  myself  strictly  to  pre- 
senting what  appear  to  me  to  be  the  more  im- 
portant and  characteristic  features  of  the  period, 
and  to  pointing  out  what  seems  to  be  their  true 
political  significance. 

It  is  hoped  that  the  few  military  narratives 
and  discussions  in  the  following  pages  will  not 
prove  unacceptable.  Knowing  the  much  greater 
familiarity  of  the  general  pubHc  with  the  details 
of  the  campaign  of  1815,  I  have  thought  that  a 
somewhat  extended  examination  of  it  would  be 
interesting.  Much  national,  and,  of  late  years, 
political,  prejudice  has  entered  into  the  discussion 
of  this  subject  in  Europe,  but  it  would  seem  that 
it  ought  to  be  possible  for  Americans  to  arrive 
at  an  impartial  estimate  of  the  credit  and  blame 
which  should  attach  to  the  chief  actors  in  that 

famous  drama. 

J.  C.  R. 

99  Mount  Vernon  Street, 
Boston,  October  1, 1885. 


TABLE  OF   CONTENTS 


LECTURE  I. 

TOULON   AND    ITAXY. 


PAGIB 


Our  general  knowledge  of  the  Napoleonic  epoch  ;  and  of 

the  various  views  about  it 1 

Our  difficulties  in  arriving  at  conclusions          ...  1 

State  of  things  in  Europe  in  1789 2 

Divine  right  of  kings        .......  2 

Oppressive  privileges  of  the  favored  classes         ...  3 

Different  countries   ........  3 

Russia          ..........  3 

Prussia     ..........  3 

Austria        ..........  3 

France 4 

Italy 4 

General  improvement  in  the  preceding  century         .         .  5 

Backwardness  of  Spain         .......  5 

No  such  thing  as  government  by  the  people  possible  any- 
where   ..........  5 

Practical  reform,  not  assertion  of  rights,  the  need  of  the 

times 5 

The  American  Revolution  a  wholly  different  matter         .  G 
(Assertion  of  the  rights  of  man  by  the  French  Revolution- 
ists accompanied  by  despotic  government          ...  7 
Cause  of  this  anomaly       .......  8 

The  French  people  did   not   exercise  political  rights,  but 

gained  liberty  and  equality        ......  9 

The  losses  of  the  privileged  classes  occasioned  by  the  re- 
forms of  the  Revolution         ......  9 

Their  hostility  to  the  new  system 10 


xu 


TABLE   OF  CONTENTS. 


Fierce  and  aggressive  character  of  the  Revolution    . 

Alarm  of  the  privileged  classes  throughout  Europe 

"  Irrepressible  conflict "  between  the  principles  of  the  Rev 

olution  and  those  underlying  existing  European  society 
War  everywhere       ........ 

The  volunteers  and  regular  army  of  France 

First  appearance  of  Napoleon  Bonaparte     .... 

His  character  as  a  soldier 

His  studies        ......... 

His  attention  to  detail 

Anecdote  .......... 

The  Siege  of  Toulon    ....... 

Appointed  general,  and  serves  with  the  army  of  Italy 
His  aversion  to  cruel  measures     ..... 

His  alleged  indifference  to  the  evils  of  war 

The  9th  of  Thermidor,  1794 

Changes  in  public  opinion  .         .         . 

The  Constitution  of  1795 

Provisions  ensuring  continuance  of  Republican  rule 
Revolt  of  the  Sections,  13th  Vendemiaire,  1795   . 
Bonaparte's  marriage  to  Madame  Beauharnais 
Her  character       ........ 

Bonaparte  appointed  to  the  command  of  the  Army  of  Italy 

Sketch  of  the  campaigns  of  1796  and  1797 

Bonaparte's  dealings  with  the  Italian  states 

Growth  of  his  reputation  as  a  general 

Augereau,  Massena,  Lannes 

The  18th  of  Fructidor,  1797     . 

Character  of  the  new  government 

The  expedition  to  Egypt  .... 

Nature  of  the  contest  in  Europe  . 

Illustrated  by  the  revolution  in  Naples     . 

The  side  of  France  the  side  of  progress 

Suppression  of  the  Parthenopfean  Republic 

Lord  Nelson  sets  aside  the  capitulation 

And  has  Caraccioli  hanged 

Reverses  of  the  French  in  Italy  and  on  the  sea 

Unpopularity  of  the  Directory 

It  is  felt  to  be  a  mere  temporary  expedient 

Return  of  Bonaparte  from  Egypt 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS.  adii 

LECTURE  II. 

THE   CONSULATE. 

Weakness  of  the  Directory 42 

Popularity  of  Bonaparte  .         ......         42 

The  18th  of  Bnimaire,  1799 43 

The   French  people  of  that  time  unable  to  govern  them- 
selves   ..........        43 

What  the  Revolution  could  and  what  it  could  not  accom- 
plish   44 

Danger  of  a  return  of  the  Bourbons  ....         45 

Necessity  of  a  change  in  the  form  of  government  .  .  45 
The  coup  d'etat  followed  by  no  proscriptions  ...  46 
And  generally  acceptable  to  all  classes         .         ...     46 

The  three  Consuls 47 

Amnesty  to  the  emigrants 47 

Bonaparte's  efforts  for  peace  fail      .....         48 

Return  of  the  French  army  from  Egiypt       .         .         ,         .49 
The  war  with  Austria  resumed  .....         49 

Campaign  of  General  Moreau  in  Germany  .         .         .         .50 

Campaign  of  the  First  Consul  in  Italy      ....         51 

His  plan       ..........     62 

His  army  .         ........         52 

He  crosses  the  Alps 53 

Marches  upoM  Milan 54 

Then  turns  to  seek  the  Austrians  .         .         .         .         .54 

Difficulties  of  the  Austrian  situation  ....  55 
Battle  of  Marengo        ........     56 

Effect  of  the  victory 57 

The  campaign  discussed  :  — 

Its  completeness  of  design    , 57 

Its  audacity 58 

Napoleon's  peculiar  characteristics  as  a  general  .         .        .59 
He  frequently  takes  unjustifiable  risks      ....         59 

Comparison  between  him  send  Moreau  .         .         .         .59 

Lanfrey's  criticism  too  severe  ......         60 

Napoleon's  fault  very  common  in  men  of  affairs  .         .     61 

Peace  concluded  with  England  and  Austria  ...  62 
The  Jacobins  oppose  the  Consular  government  .  .  .63 
But  have  no  following  among  the  people  ...         63 

The  Royalists  are  supported  by  the  British  government      .     64 


XIV 


TABLE   OF  CONTENTS. 


The  Infernal  Machine  of  December,  1800 
The  conspiracy  of  Georges  Cadoudal 

Character  of  Georges 

His  plan  is  openly  to  murder  Bonaparte  in  the  streets 
His  devotion  to  the  cause  of  legitimacy     ... 
His  plan  is  favored  by  the  Comte  d'Artois  . 
And  assisted  by  the  British  goverimient   . 
Strength  of  the  Legitimist  prejudice    . 
Citation  from  Scott's  Life  of  Napoleon     . 
Excitement  in  Paris  on  the  discovery  of  the  plot 
The  Due  d'Engliien  suspected  of  complicity  with  it 
He  is  arrested  at  Ettenheim  in  Baden 
And  tried  by  court-martial  at  Vincennes  and  shot    . 
Charges  against  Bonaparte  ..... 

General  principles  applicable  to  a  case  of  this  nature 
The  arrest  clearly  justifiable         .... 

The  doings  of  the  court-martial        .... 

Constitution  of  the  court      .         .         .         .         • 

The  original  records  lost  ...... 

Savary's  statement  of  the  Duke's  reply  to  the  court 
The  court  really  had  no  option  but  to  condemn  him 
The  real  question  was,  Why  was  he  tried  ? 
Bonaparte's  reasons  ....... 

The  Duke's  papers  seized  at  Ettenheim 

His  anxiety  about  them 

Bonaparte  examines  them     ..... 
He  frames  questions  out  of  their  contents 
Probable  contents  of  the  papers  .... 

Miot  de  Melito's  statements 

The  Duke's  anxiety  to  see  the  First  Consul 
Responsibility  for  the  promptitude  of  the  execution 
Savary  probably  not  responsible  .... 

Bonaparte  certainly  not    ...... 

It  was  most  likely  a  mistake  of  the  Judge  Advocate 
Summary  of  the  case         ...... 


65 

66 
66 
66 
67 
67 
68 
68 
69 
70 
71 
72 
72 
72 
73 
74 
75 
75 
75 
76 
77 
78 
78 
78 
79 
80 
80 
81 
82 
82 
85 
86 
86 
86 
87 


LECTURE  III. 

NAPOLEON  IN  GERMANY. 

Suppression  of  the  conspiracy  of  Georges     . 
Reforms  of  the  Consular  government 
Lanfrey's  perverse  criticisms 


88 
89 
89 


TABLE   OF  CONTENTS. 


XV 


Cause  of  Lanfrey's  animosity  against  Napoleon 

The  Code  Napoleon 

Napoleon's  share  in  this  great  work 

Its  great  utility 

The  Concordat  ....         . 

Establishment  of  the  Empire        .... 

Demanded  by  public  opinion     .... 

Dilemma  of  the  Republican  theorists   . 
The  Empire  really  a  change  for  the  better 
The  Peace  of  Luueville  and  its  consequences 
French  influence  in  Germany    .... 

Its  wholesome  character       ..... 

Opposing  view  of  German  nationalists 

Stein  and  the  Knights  of  the  Empire   . 

Fyffe's  objections  to  French  interference  examined 

Necessity  for  these  changes  in  Germany 

No  national  feeling  then  existent  in  Germany  . 

The  course  of  the  West  German  States  justified  . 

Italy  becomes  a  kingdom 

Causes  of  the  coalition  of  1805     . 

The  projected  invasion  of  England  - 

Its  probable  fate,  if  it  had  been  attempted 

Battle  of  Trafalgar  .... 

The  campaign  of  1805  in  Germany 
German  allies  of  France  . 
Capture  of  Ulm  and  entry  into  Vienna 
The  French  advance  into  Moravia    . 
Danger  of  Napoleon's  situation    . 
Hostile  demonstration  of  Prussia 
Battle  of  Austerlitz      .... 

Causes  of  his  great  success  on  this  occasion 

A  different  policy  should  have  been  followed  by  the  allies 

Peace  of  Presbourg  ....... 

What  we  should  look  at  in  these  conflicts     . 

The  result  of  the  war  a  benefit  to  Europe 

The  Confederation  of  the  Rhine  established 

Continuance  of  the  war  by  England 

Her  attitude   towards   France  not  unlike  her  attitude 

wards  the  United  States  in  the  late  Civil  War 
The  policy  of  Prussia  vacillating       .... 

The  war  party  finally  prevail        ..... 

Great  age  of  the  leading  Prussian  generals  .     . 


to- 


90 
91 
91 
93 

96 
97 
97 
98 
99 
100 
100 
100 
101 
103 
104 
105 
106 
107 
108 
108 
110 
110 
111 
111 
112 
112 
112 
113 
114 
115 
116 
117 
118 
119 
120 
121 

121 
123 
124 
126 


xvi  TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 

The  campaign  of  Jena         .         .        .        o        .         .        .  126 

Manoeuvres  prior  to  the  battle 127 

Battles  of  Jena  and  Auerstiidt 127 

The  Emperor  rewards  Davout 128 

Conquest  of  Prussia 128 

Battles  of  Eylau  and  Friedland 129 

Peace  of  TUsit 129 

LECTURE  IV. 

TILSIT   TO   MOSCOW. 

Peace  of  Tilsit 130 

Establishment  of  the  Grand  Duchy  of  Warsaw    .         .         •  130 
And  of  the  Kingdom  of  Westphalia  ....       130 

Its  new  Constitution     ........  131 

Its  characteristic  features  ......       131 

Napoleon's  letter  to  Jerome  ......  132 

Napoleon's  views  of   the  needs  of   the  western  states  of 

Europe 133 

His  treatment  of  the  Neapolitan  Bourbons  and  of  the  Span- 
ish Bourbons     .........  135 

His  mistaken  view  of  the  Spanish  people  .         .         .       136 

What  he  tried  to  do  for  Spain 137 

Spain  rejects  the  new  system   ......       139 

Napoleon  invades  and  leaves  Spain      .....  140 

Austria  declares  war  without  provocation  .         .         .       141 

The  campaign  opens  at  Abensberg  and  Eckmiihl  .         .  142 

Battle  of  Aspern 143 

Battle  of  Wagram 145 

Remarks  on  this  battle     .......       149 

The  Peace  of  Vienna 149 

Beneficial  changes  effected  throughout  the  Empire  .         .       150 , 
The  continental  system         .......  152 

The  stability  of  the  Empire  dependent  on  Napoleon's  life      152 
The  divorce  of  the  Empress  Josephine  ....  154 

Causes  of  the  continuance  of  the  wars       ....       156 

The  fundamental  difference  between  the  old  and  the  new 

systems 156 

The  aggrandizement  of  the  Empire  of  Napoleon      .         .       157 
War  impending  between  France  and  Russia         .         .         .  158 
Its  general  causes     ........       158 

The  Polish  question  :  Russia's  plans    .....  159 


TABLE   OF  CONTENTS. 


xvii 


Russia  hopes  to  break  the  power  of  Napoleon  . 

Napoleon  hopes  to  reestablish  Poland  . 

His  preparations  and  armies     .... 

He  crosses  the  Niemeu         ..... 

Position  of  the  Russian  armies 

Napoleon  succeeds  in  separating  them 

But  fails  in  forcing  Barclay  de  Tolly  to  fight  alone 

Operations  about  Smolensk  .... 

Junot's  inaction  at  Valoutina    .... 

Napoleon's  situation  at  Smolensk 

He  determines  to  advance  on  Moscow 

Battle  of  Borodino        ...... 

His  mistake  in  not  putting  in  the  Guard  . 

He  arrives  at  Moscow  ..... 


161 
162 
163 
163 
164 
165 
166 
167 
169 
169 
171 
172 
174 
175 


LECTURE  V. 


MOSCOW   TO    ELBA. 


Condition  of  the  French  army  at  Moscow 
The  city  is  burnt  ...... 

Retreat  unavoidable  .... 

Napoleon's  inexcusable  delay 

Possibility  of  effecting  a  safe  retreat 

Activity  of  the  Russian  armies     . 

The  discipline  of  the  Grand  Army  impaired 

Battle  of  Malo-Jaroslawetz 

The  retreat  commenced    .... 

Arrival  at  Smolensk.     The  cold  begins 
Terrible  losses  ....... 

The  different  corps  retreat  separately  on  Krasnoi 
Battle  of  Krasnoi      ...... 

Heroic  conduct  of  Ney 
The  weather  moderates    . 
Reorganization  of  the  army  at  Orcha 
Mistake  of  Koutousof 
The  crossing  of  the  Beresina 
Criticism  on  Napoleon's  conduct 
The  retreat  continued  to  Wilna   . 
Severity  of  the  cold  .... 

Napoleon  leaves  the  army    . 

Sir  Robert  Wilson's  opinion  of  this  step  . 

The  army  falls  back  to  Kowno  and  thence  into  Prussia 


176 
177 
178 
180 
180 
181 
182 
183 
184 
184 
184 
184 
185 
186 
186 
186 
187 
188 
189 
191 
192 
192 
192 
193 


xviii  TABLE   OF  CONTENTS. 

Losses  of  the  campaign     .......       193 

Partly  due  to  preventable  causes  .....  194 

Sufferings  of  the  Russians         ......       195 

The  French  army  practically  dissolved         ....  195 

Disgraceful  conduct  of  General  Torek      ....       195 

Ketreat  of  the  Austrian  contingent       .....  198 

Russia  gains  the  Grand  Duchy  of  Warsaw        .         .         .       198 
The  Czar  aims  at  the  "  Deliverance  of  Europe  "  .         .         .  198 
The  attitude  of  Prussia  and  Austria  ....       199 

Awakening  of  the  Legitimist  party  throughout  Europe        .  202 
Great  efforts  of  France  and  her  allies  for  the  coming  cam- 
paign          202 

Prussia  joins  the  coalition  ......       203 

Liberal  promises  of  the  allies        ......  203 

They  appeal  to  the  sentiment  of  German  nationality  .  204 
The  real  state  of  the  countries  forming  the  French  Empire  205 
Xapoleon  obstinately  persists  in  the  Spanish  war  .         .  207 

And  in  keeping  up  the  continental  system         .         .         .       207 

.  208 

.   209 
.  210 

.   211 
.  211 

.   213 
.  214 

.   215 


The  new  Grand  Army  and  its  faults     . 

Opening  of  the  campaign  of  1813 

Battles  of  Liitzen  and  Bautzen 

Austria  exacts  terms  for  her  neutrality     . 

Napoleon  refuses  to  yield  anything 

His  folly  in  so  doing  .... 

Austria  joins  the  coalition    .... 

Battle  of  Leipsic       ..... 

Xapoleon's  terrible  mistake  in  not  concentrating  his  armies  215 

He  refuses  reasonable  terms  of  peace  .....  217 

His  obstinate  and  reckless   persistence  in  continuing  the 

war 219 

Campaign  of  1814  and  fall  of  Paris 219 

LECTURE  VI. 

THE  KETUKN   FROM   ELBA. 

State  of  France  in  1814 220 

L'npopularity  of  Napoleon 221 

But  there  existed  no  desire  to  return  to  the  old  regime    .       221 
The  allies  refuse  to  treat  with  Xapoleon      ....  222 

Folly  of  this  course  ........       222 

And  of  restoring  the  Bourbons     ......  223 

Napoleon  exiled  to  Elba 224 


TABLE   OF  CONTENTS. 


XIX 


Louis  XVIII.  on  the  throne 

His  difficulties  .... 

Discontent  in  the  army 

The  Judiciary  interfered  with  . 

The  fanaticism  of  the  returned  emigrants 

The  Constitution  of  Louis  XYUI.    , 

It  avails  the  king  but  little 

Hard  terms  exacted  from  France 

Depression  of  manufactures 

Napoleon  not  held  responsible  for  these  troubles 

He  leaves  Elba  and  lands  near  Cannes 

His  unopposed  march  to  Paris 

League  against  him  of  all  the  European  Powers  . 

Folly  and  injustice  of  this  course 

The  liberal  party  in  France 

They  alone  are  lukewarm 

The  several  courses  open  to  Napoleon . 

State  of  Italy  and  western  Germany 

Occupation  of  Belgium  by  the  allies     . 

Armies  of  Wellington  and  Bliicher  . 

Napoleon's  plan  of  campaign 

His  army  and  its  chiefs     . 

Napoleon  and  Davout  .... 

Soult  takes  the  place  of  Berthier 

Condition  of  Wellington's  army  . 

And  of  that  of  Bliicher     . 

Napoleon  crosses  the  Sambre 

Ney  and  Quatre  Bras 

The  Prussians  concentrate  on  Ligny 

Wellington  fears  that  Napoleon  Avill  turn  his  right 

Concentration  of  the  French  at  Frasnes  and  Fleurus 

Napoleon  resolves  to  attack  the  Prussians 

Battle  of  Ligny    ..... 

Ney's  partial  concentration  at  Frasnes 

Tlie  first  corps  under  d'Erlon  march  towards  Saint 

Battle  of  Quatre  Bras  ..... 

The  staff-officer's  error     .... 

Result  of  the  battle  of  Quatre  Bras 

Consequences  of  d'Erlon's  not  being  engaged 

Criticism  on  Bliicher  and  Wellington  . 


Amand 


225 
226 
227 
228 
228 
229 
229 
231 
231 
232 
233 
234 
235 
236 
237 
238 
239 
241 
241 
242 
242 
243 
244 
246 
247 
247 
248 
249 
250 
250 
252 
253 
253 
255 
255 
256 
256 
257 
257 
258 


XX  TABLE   OF  CONTENTS. 

LECTURE  VII. 

WATERLOO   AND   SAINT   HELENA. 

The  morning  of  the  17th  of  June 261 

No  sufficient  reconuoissances  made       .....  261 

Careless  confidence  of  Napoleon        .....  262 

He  detaches  Grouchy  in  pursuit  of  Bliicher  .         .         .  263 

The  Bertrand  order 263 

The  Emperor  marches  on  Quatre  Bras,  and  Grouchy  on 

Gembloux 264 

Criticism  of  the  Emperor  for  not  attacking  the  English  at 

Quatre  Bras 265 

Bliicher  retires  on  Wavre 266 

Grouchy's  letter  of  ten  p.  M.  of  the  17th  ....  266 
Grouchy  ascertains  that  the  Prussians  have  fallen  back  on 

Wavre 268 

His  true  course 268 

His  delay  in  starting  on  the  18th  .....  269 

He  declines  to  march  to  the  sound  of  the  cannon      .         •  270 

Situation  of  the  two  armies  at  Waterloo       ....  271 

Wellington's  position 272 

Delay  of  Napoleon  in  commencing  the  action       .         .         .  272 

Battle  of  Waterloo 273 

Attack  upon  Hougoumont    .......  273 

D'Erlon's  attack  and  its  failure 274 

Losses  of  the  English.     Death  of  Picton      ....  274 

The  Prussians  seen  approaching        .....  275 

The  sixth  corps  detached  to  resist  them        ....  276 

Inadequate  force  of  infantry  in  the  front  .         .        .  276 

The  cavalry  put  in        .......         .  276 

Failure  of  the  cavalry  attacks  ......  276 

Losses  of  the  English  from  artillery  and  skirmishers  .         .  277 

La  Haye  Sainte  taken       .......  278 

Critical  condition  of  Wellington's  army        ....  278 

The  action  near  Plauchenoit      ......  279 

The  sixth  corps  reinforced  by  a  portion  of  the  Guard  .  .  279 
Napoleon  determines  to  put  in  the  Old  Guard  against  the 

English 280 

Arrival  of  the  Prussians  on  the  English  left         .         .         .  281 

A  cessation  of  ofPensive  operations  the  wiser  course  .  280 

Attack  of  the  Imperial  Guard  and  its  failure        .         .        .  281 


TABLE   OF  CONTENTS. 


The  Prussians  defeat  Lobau  and  carry  Planchenoit  .         .       283 
Rout  of  the  French  army      .......  283 

Great  praise  due  to  Wellington  and  Bliicher    .         .         .       284 
Review  of  the  campaign        .......  285 

Successes  of  the  French  on  the  loth  and  16th  .         .         .       285 
Fatal  neglect  in  not  ascertaining  the  direction  of  the  Prus- 
sian retreat  after  Ligny    ....  ...  286 

Napoleon's  mistaken  conjecture  as  to  that  direction  .       286 

His  delay  in  starting  Grouchy       ......  286 

Grouchy's  duty  on  the  18th 286 

The  despatches  sent  Grouchy        ......  287 

Grouchy  rejoins  the  wreck  of  the  army     ....       292 

The  situation  in  Paris  after  Waterloo  .....  293 

Napoleon's  abdication       .......       294 

Efforts  of  the  provisional  government  to  obtain  recognition    294 
Convention  of  Paris      .         .......  295 

Louis  XVIII.  resumes  the  throne     .....       295 

Napoleon  exiled  to  Saint  Helena 295 

His  life  there 296 

His  treatment  by  the  English  government   ....  296 

His  commentaries  on  his  wars  ......       297 

Absurd  charges  against  him  ......  298 

His  death  and  funeral       .......       298 

The  Bourbons  restored  .......  299 

Trial  and  execution  of  Ney       ......       299 

Indifference  of  Wellington  .......  300 

He  allows  his  convention  to  be  violated  by  the  king  .       301 

The  reaction  on  the  continent       ......  301 

Erroneous  view  of  Napoleon  by  liberal  writers         .         .       303 
Estimate  of  Napoleon  and  his  work      .....  304 

Charge  of  selfishness         .  ......       306 

His  character  and  his  acts 307 


APPENDICES. 


APPENDIX   I, 

On  Napoleon's  occasional  severities      .         .        . 


.  309 


APPENDIX    n. 

On  Napoleon's  hold  upon  his  soldiers 


.      310 


xxii  TABLE   OF  CONTENTS. 

APPENDIX    in. 

On  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer's  emijloyment  of  the  "  Great  Man 
Theory  of  History  "  in  reference  to  Napoleon  ,         .         .  32Q 

APPENDIX    IV. 
On  the  Polish  question  and  the  Russian  war     .         .         .       321 

APPENDIX   V. 

On  Marmont's  criticism  on  Napoleon's  tactics  in  his  later 
campaigns 325 

APPENDIX  VI. 

On    the    numbers  engaged  and  on  the  losses  in  the  war 
with  Russia 326 

APPENDIX   VII. 

On  the  Bertrand  order 329 

APPENDIX  vin. 

On  Ney's  employment  of  the  cavalry  of  the  Guard  at  Wa- 
terloo   ..........       338 

APPENDIX    IX. 

On  Dr.  Edward  A.  Freeman's  continuing  to  use  the  name 
"  Buonaparte  "  in  his  histories 338 


LIST  OF  MAPS. 


Italian  Campaign  op  1796 facing  page  24 

Italian  Campaign  op  1800 between  pages  54,  55 

Battle  of  Austerlitz facing  page  114 

Battle  op  Wagbam facing  page  148 

Russia,  Wilna  to  Smolensk     ....     between  pages  166,  167 

Campaign  of  Waterloo,  June  16, 1815,  9  A.M.   .  facing  page  250 

The  Same,  June  16, 1815,  5  P.  M. facing  page  256 

The  Same,  June  18, 1815,  4  A.  M facing  page  268 

Battle  of  Waterloo,^  June  18,  1815,  745  P.  M. 

between  pages  282,  283 

ifor  this  map  the  author  is  indebted  to  Captain  Sibome's  valuable  Atlas, 


THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 


LECTURE  I. 

TOULON   AND    IT^y^Y. 

The  career  of  Napoleon  Bonaparte  possesses 
an  irresistible  attraction  for  every  one.  We  rec- 
ognize the  fascination  of  that  wonderful  story 
of  brilliant  achievement,  steady  toil,  and  unpar- 
aUeled  success,  followed  by  defeat,  abdication, 
exile.  The  great  names,  Marengo,  Austerlitz, 
Jena,  Leipsic,  Waterloo,  St.  Helena,  are  aU  fa- 
miliar to  OUT  ears. 

Moreover,  we  are  all  more  or  less  acquainted 
with  the  various  and  frequently  opposite  opin- 
ions that  have  been  held  regarding  Napoleon 
and  his  work.  We  know  that  Sir  Walter  Scott 
and  Sir  Archibald  AHson  give  us  the  views  of 
the  nation  that  was  always  his  most  active  and 
persistent  foe;  that  Thiers,  in  his  great  work, 
tries  as  a  patriotic  Frenchman  to  do  him  full 
justice  ;  that  Lanfrey,  in  his  recent  biography, 
attacks  his  memory  with  aU  the  virulence  of 
political  hate,  caused  by  existing  political  con- 
troversies in  which  he  has  been  hhnself  a  most 
active  partisan. 


2  THE    FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

We  know,  also,  not  only  that  we  are  three 
thousand  miles  away  from  the  scene  of  Napo- 
leon's activity,  but  that  our  country  is  separated 
by  a  great  gulf,  in  laws,  traditions,  and  social 
and  political  conditions,  from  the  Europe  of  the 
First  Napoleon.  Doubtless  many  of  us  have 
seen  the  absurdity  of  instituting  any  compari- 
son between  him  and  Washington ;  no  doubt 
we  have  recognized  that  there  is  no  substantial 
resemblance  between  the  French  Revolution  and 
our  own.  Very  likely  we  have  all  felt  the  great 
difficulty  of  forming  any  conclusions  in  regard 
to  Napoleon  and  his  work  in  which  we  should 
ourselves  place  any  very  great  confidence.  Let 
us,  however,  make  another  trial. 

And  our  first  task  must  be  to  understand  the 
character  of  the  times. 

Prior  to  the  French  Revolution  the  continent 
of  Europe,  with  the  exception  of  Switzerland, 
was  ruled  in  the  interest  of  privileged  classes. 
The  Emperor  of  Germany,  the  Kings  of  France, 
Prussia,  Spain,  and  Portugal,  the  Czar  of  Rus- 
sia, the  Electors,  Dukes,  Margraves,  Landgraves, 
and  Archbishops  who  ruled  over  the  smaller 
German  States,  the  Senates  of  Venice  and  Ge- 
noa, all  these  princes  and  potentates  governed 
their  subjects,  with  greater  or  less  attention  to 
their  needs  to  be  sure,  but  with  a  uniform  as- 
sumption of  the  "  divine  right  of  kings."  But 
this  was  not  all.  Everywhere  on  the  continent 
there  were  orders  of  nobility,  ecclesiastical  f unc- 


TOULON  AND  ITALY.  6 

tionaries  and  the  like,  who  were  not  amenable  to 
the  general  laws  of  the  land ;  who,  many  of 
them,  were  not  liable  to  taxation ;  who  in  many 
cases  possessed  rights  over  their  poorer  neigh- 
bors that  were  extremely  oppressive,  vexatious, 
and  burdensome. 

While  all  this  was  universally  true,  there  were 
distinctions.  In  Russia  there  existed  an  oriental 
despotism,  modified,  to  be  sure,  by  occasional  as- 
sassination, but  still  hopelessly  incapable  of  mod- 
ification in  the  direction  of  progress.  In  Prus- 
sia there  was  the  strictest  of  military  systems, 
permeating  entire  society.  The  army  was  offi- 
cered solely  from  the  nobility.  The  serfs  were 
tied  to  the  soil.  No  doubt  the  Great  Frederic 
had  done  much  for  his  people,  but  Prussia,  al- 
though an  enlightened  country  in  many  ways, 
was  wedded  to  a  system  of  which  the  king,  the 
army,  the  nobility,  and  the  serfs  were  the  chief 
and  almost  the  only  constituents.  In  Austria, 
and  in  the  Catholic  states  of  Germany,  the  sit- 
uation was  rendered  more  complicated  by  the 
great  wealth  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church,  its 
enormous  political  influence,  and  the  compara- 
tive immunity  of  its  large  possessions  from  taxa- 
tion. In  fact,  the  army,  the  nobility,  the  church, 
and  the  peasantry,  constituted  throughout  upper 
Germany  almost  the  only  components  of  the 
population,  and  from  neither  of  these  classes 
could  important  changes  for  the  better  be  ex* 
pected,  at  least  within  any  reasonable  time. 


4  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

In  France  the  situation  was  in  some  respects 
worse,  and  in  some  respects  better  than  in  Ger- 
many. The  absenteeism  and  extravagance  of 
the  nobihty  were  no  doubt  more  pronounced 
than  in  Germany,  and  led  to  worse  results.  The 
peasants  were  ground  down  by  agents,  and  their 
hard  earnings  were  wasted  in  luxurious  profli- 
gacy at  Paris  and  Versailles.  They  were,  be- 
sides, subject  to  numerous  petty  but  extremely 
vexatious  exactions  in  the  way  of  labor,  tithes, 
and  the  like,  which  added  greatly  to  the  misery 
of  their  situation.  Moreover,  France  was  heavily 
in  debt ;  she  had  been  for  years  recklessly 
straining  her  resources  in  foreign  wars.  Still, 
she  possessed  one  element  which  the  states  of 
Germany  did  not  possess,  at  least  to  anything 
like  such  an  extent,  and  that  was  a  large  and 
prosperous  and  intelligent  middle  class.  These 
people,  though  shut  out  from  participation  in 
the  administration  of  the  government,  were  often 
well  educated  and  of  real  importance.  Then  the 
nobility  and  gentry  of  France  contained  very 
many  men  of  enhghtened  views,  who  were  deter- 
mined to  improve  the  condition  of  their  coun- 
try. The  philosophical  and  political  writings  of 
Voltaire  and  Rousseau,  and  their  coadjutors, 
which  attacked  the  principles  on  which  the  old 
regime  was  based,  found  a  large  and  influential 
audience. 

Italy  was,  then  as  now,  composed  of  various 
communities.      The   States   of    the  Church  and 


TOULON  AND  ITALY.  5 

the  Kingdom  of  Naples  were  misgoverned  to 
such  a  degree  that  the  wretchedness  of  the 
poorer  classes  in  those  countries  has  rarely  been 
equalled.  The  Austrian  provinces  and  Piedmont 
fared  somewhat  better.  Italy  also  possessed  a 
tolerably  large  educated  class,  and  many  public- 
spirited  private  citizens. 

In  aU  these  countries  there  had  been  an  im- 
provement in  the  condition  of  the  people  since 
the  beginning  of  the  century,  due  partly,  no 
doubt,  to  the  well-intentioned  efPorts  at  reform 
of  many  of  the  rulers,  but  mostly  to  the  growth 
of  wealth,  and  the  consequent  enlightenment 
and  social  influence  of  the  middle  classes.  But 
in  Spain  there  had  been  little  change.  Here 
the  old  system  of  things  existed  in  full  force. 
Here  was  the  most  corrupt  and  bigoted  of 
courts,  the  most  unmitigated  priestly  despotism, 
and  an  almost  entire  separation  from  the  ideas 
of  modern  Europe. 

It  is  obvious  from  this  brief  review  that  in 
none  of  the  countries  of  which  we  have  spoken 
was  there  anything  like  government  by  the  peo- 
ple. In  fact,  it  is  sufficiently  clear,  I  think, 
that  in  most,  if  not  all,  of  these  countries  any- 
thing of  this  sort  was  for  the  moment,  at  least, 
wholly  impracticable.  The  first  need  of  these 
countries  was  better  government ;  to  this,  con- 
tentions regarding  the  right  to  govern  might 
well  be  postponed.  The  evils  under  which  the 
peoples  of  the  continent  were  groaning  in  1789 


6  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

were  real  and  not  theoretical,  and  until  they 
should  be  delivered  from  them,  questions  of  the- 
ory must  wait.  It  was  no  doubt  a  fair  question 
for  the  freemen  of  Massachusetts  and  Virginia 
whether  the  King  of  England  was  entitled  to 
le^■}'  taxes  from  them  without  their  consent  any 
more  than  fi'om  the  freemen  of  York  and  Sus- 
sex ;  and  it  was  equally  within  theii*  compe- 
tency to  resist  by  force  of  arms  a  pretension,  the 
burden  of  which  they  had  actually  never  felt. 
They  were  ali-eady  possessed  of  political  power ; 
they  and  theii"  ancestors  had  enjoyed  it  for  hun- 
dreds of  years  ;  the  only  question  of  1776  re- 
garded the  extent  of  its  exercise.  But  the  Eu- 
rope of  the  French  Reyolution  stood  in  no  such 
attitude  as  this  to  the  problems  of  17S9.  It 
was  with  the  Eiu'ope  of  that  day  not  a  question 
of  political  power,  except  incidentally  ;  the  need, 
the  all-absorbing  need,  was  relief  from  intolera- 
ble oppression,  gross  and  most  exasperatmg  in- 
equalities in  social  and  economical  and  poHtical 
status  ;  it  was  to  undo  the  heavy  burdens  and 
to  let  the  oppressed  2:0  fi"ee,  and  to  brciik  every 
yoke.  Connected  with  this,  an  essential  part  of 
it.  we  may  admit,  was  the  participation  of  that 
portion  of  the  people  of  each  coimtry  who  were 
fit  for  it  in  the  tasks  and  privileges  of  govern- 
ment. But  the  first,  the  imperative,  thing  to  do 
was  to  break  down  the  power  of  the  pri^Hileged 
classes,  to  subject  the  nobleman  and  the  ecclesi- 
astic to  the  penalties  of  the  same  law  that  bore 


TOULON  AND  ITALY.  7 

upon  the  bourgeois  and  the  peasant,  and  to  im- 
pose the  same  taxes  upon  their  property' ;  and 
at  the  same  time  to  give  the  humbler  classes  the 
same  legal  rights  that  belonged  to  their  nobler 
and  wealthier  neighbors,  to  lift  from  them  the 
burden  of  extortion,  imposition,  and  injustice, 
and  to  open  to  them  the  chance  of  attaining  the 
legitimate  objects  of  human  ambition.  This 
done,  and  the  possession  and  exercise  of  political 
power  would  come  in  good  time. 

Naturally  enough,  however,  the  French  Revo- 
lutionists asserted  the  rights  of  man,  and  based 
their  proceedings  upon  that  assertion.  Yet,  as 
a  matter  of  fact,  at  no  time  during  the  Revolu- 
tion did  the  people  of  France  govern  themselves 
in  the  sense  that  we  are  to-day  governing  oui*- 
selves.  The  National  Assembly,  the  Terrorists, 
the  Committee  of  Public  Safety,  the  Directory, 
governed  France  as  despotically  as  ever  had 
Louis  the  Fourteenth  ;  nor  can  we  wonder  at 
it.  Had  they  not  done  so,  the  tide  of  revolu- 
tion would  probably  have  gone  backward.  The 
masses  of  a  people  who  have  been  rigidly  gov- 
erned for  centuries,  however  true  may  be  the 
statement  that  they  possess  the  right  to  govern 
themselves,  —  a  question  I  will  not  discuss  here, 
—  do  not  and  cannot  be  expected  all  at  once  to 
exercise  that  riirht.  Like  many  other  arts  in 
this  world,  the  art  of  self-government  is  of  slow 
growth,  and  neither  the  enactnwMits  of  1781)  and 
1700,   nor   the!    torrlbh;   tragcMlics    of    171)2  and 


8  THE   FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

1793  were  able  to  confer  upon  the  masses  of  the 
French  people  the  political  aptitude  for  manag- 
ing their  own  affairs,  which  was  the  inheritance 
of  Enoflish  and  American  freemen.  Hence  the 
harsh  and  searching  despotism  of  the  Reign  of 
Terror,  a  despotism  which  had  undoubtedly  for 
its  object  to  maintain  the  most  advanced  posi- 
tions of  the  extreme  party  on  the  subject  not 
only  of  liberty,  but  of  the  political  rights  of 
man.  You  observe  the  anomaly,  but  observe 
also  the  alleged  necessity.  Close  students  of  the 
French  Revolution  assure  us  that  it  was  more 
than  once  in  danger  of  stopping,  and  of  reac- 
tion: that  is,  the  people,  if  left  to  themselves, 
would  have  receded  from  the  claims  put  forward 
in  their  behalf,  and  have  welcomed  the  return 
of  the  old  order  of  things,  with,  of  course,  some 
important  changes.  To  prevent  this,  the  revo- 
lutionary party  felt  themselves  obliged  to  take 
stringent  measures ;  that  is,  the  party  which  as- 
serted the  riofhts  of  man  felt  themselves  oblifjed 
to  refuse  to  those  who  differed  from  them  the 
exercise  of  those  rights.  Singular  position,  in- 
deed ;  but  this  is  always  the  result  of  conferring 
political  rights  in  advance  of  the  fitness  of  the 
grantees  to  wield  their  new  privileges.  But 
what  I  want  you  to  remember  particularly  here, 
is,  that  during  the  entire  Revolution  France 
was  despotically  governed ;  there  was  no  local 
self-government  to  speak  of;  everything  was 
done  according  to  orders  from  Paris.     True,  this 


TOULON  AND  ITALY.  9 

was  done  professedly  in  the  interest  of  liberty, 
and  was  doubtless  necessary,  unless  the  people 
were  to  be  left  free  to  return  to  the  monarchy  ; 
still  it  was  done  ;  even  the  French  Revolution 
made  no  very  general  practical  difference  in  re- 
spect to  the  quantum  of  political  power  actually 
exercised  by  the  people. 

But  in  respect  to  the  quantum  of  liberty  and 
equality  enjoyed  by  the  people  it  made  a  tremen- 
dous difference.  All  artificial  distinctions  were 
swept  away ;  all  unequal  burdens  were  rectified ; 
great  monopolies  were  suppressed;  all  privileges 
were  abolished;  the  burdens  of  taxation  and 
military  service  were  imposed  alike  on  noble  and 
peasant ;  the  throne,  the  church,  the  nobility, 
were  destroyed.  A  new  era  was  fairly  and  hope- 
fully begun.  An  enthusiasm  for  the  rights  of 
man,  ardent  and  contagious,  filled  the  air. 

Revolutions,  as  we  have  often  been  told,  are 
not  made  with  rose-water ;  certainly  the  French 
Revolution  was  no  exception  to  this  rule.  The 
changes  of  which  we  have  been  speaking,  bene- 
ficial as  they  were  to  the  many,  were  crushing 
blows  to  the  few.  Rank,  privilege,  office,  emolu- 
ments, salary,  perquisites,  often  the  very  means  of 
subsistence,  were  ruthlessly  and  suddenly  swept 
away.  The  destruction  of  the  inequalities  that 
weighed  so  grievously  upon  the  poorer  and  mid- 
dle classes  was,  in  another  aspect,  nothing  but 
the  abolition  without  compensation  of  innumera- 
ble vested  rights.    To  free  slaves  is  to  take  away 


10  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

the  property  of  masters.  Hence,  the  great  and 
beneficent  reforms  of  the  French  Revolution, 
carried  through  as  they  were,  not  gradually  and 
cautiously  and  mildly,  but  suddenly  and  vio- 
lently and  harshly,  excited  the  implacable  re- 
sentment of  those  who  suffered  by  them  and 
those  whose  lives  were  bound  up  with  the  old 
order  of  things.  Many  of  them  became  traitors 
to  their  country,  and  stirred  up  against  her  the 
hostility  of  the  other  powers.  Others  excited 
insurrections  at  home,  or  carried  on  treasonable 
correspondence  with  the  enemy.  All  this  natu- 
rally and  inevitably  increased  the  revolutionary 
furor,  and  led  to  extreme  measures  of  retaliation. 

I  need  not  dwell  on  this  part  of  the  sub- 
ject. Every  one  knows  the  fierce  and  aggressive 
character  which  the  Revolution  assumed ;  the  in- 
tolerance, the  espionage,  the  despotism,  of  dem- 
agogues and  of  jacobin  clubs ;  the  terrible 
scenes  of  blood ;  the  continuous  and  indiscrim- 
inate executions ;  the  revolutionary  furor,  not 
only  overspreading  France,  but  burning  to  carry 
revolutionary  principles  and  methods  at  the  point 
of  the  bayonet  and  to  the  fierce  music  of  the 
Marseillaise  into  all  the  respectable  and  conser- 
vative duchies  and  oligarchies  and  monarchies  of 
Italy  and  Germany. 

And  the  fact  really  was  that  the  French  Rev- 
olution was  the  beginning  of  a  new  order  of 
things,  of  which  the  leading  principle  was  the 
equality  of  all  men  before  the  law ;  and  this  prin- 


TOULON  AND  ITALY.  11 

ciple  was  not  only  opposed  to  the  theories  enter- 
tained at  that  time  by  the  great  mass  of  the  well- 
to-do  and  cultivated  classes,  but  on  the  continent, 
at  any  rate,  it  actually  threatened  their  material 
well  beino-.  Where  was  the  French  nobleman  ? 
An  exile,  if  fortunate  enough  to  be  still  alive. 
Where  was  the  French  gentleman,  whose  in- 
come, and  often  a  slender  one,  was  drawn  from 
certain  manorial  or  other  rights  or  impositions, 
which  lay  like  mortgages  or  ground  rents  on  the 
lands  of  the  neiofliborins:  farmers  ?  His  income 
wholly  gone,  teaching  French  for  a  living,  very 
likely,  in  London  or  New  York.  Nothing  like 
such  a  wholesale  spoliation  of  the  upper  classes 
of  a  country  had  ever  been  seen  or  heard  of  be- 
fore. No  doubt  imaoination  and  terror  added 
much  to  the  natural  hostility  provoked  by  French 
principles,  as  they  were  called.  But,  in  sober 
truth,  the  Revolution  stood  for  a  new  and  ut- 
terly antagonistic  system :  from  the  first  mo- 
ment there  beg-an  between  the  Revolution  and 
the  established  order  of  things  in  Europe  what 
the  late  Mr.  Seward  would  have  termed  "  an 
irrepressible  conflict."  That  this  conflict  should 
express  itself  in  war  was  of  course  to  be  ex- 
pected. In  the  same  year  that  Louis  XVI  Avas 
guillotined,  France  was  at  war  with  all  her 
neighbors  from  the  Scheldt  to  the  Pyrenees. 

We  have  not  time  here  to  enter  into  the 
details  of  the  war ;  we  can  only  take  a  hasty 
glance  at  its  general  features.     The  raw  volun- 


12  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

teers  which  France  sent  in  multitudes  into  the 
field  were  at  first  badly  beaten.  The  organization 
of  the  old  regular  army  had  been  broken  up  in 
great  part  by  revolutionary  proscription,  and  its 
discipline  and  efficiency  greatly  impaired  ;  never- 
theless it  was  these  troops  that  saved  France. 
After  a  while  able  men  came  upon  the  stage : 
Jourdan,  Pichegru,  Moreau,  Hoche,  appeared  at 
the  head  of  armies.  And,  second  in  command 
of  the  artillery  at  the  siege  of  Toulon,  then  oc- 
cupied by  British  troops,  supported  by  a  British 
fleet,  a  young  major  of  artillery,  by  name  NajJO- 
leon  Bonaparte,  made  his  mark  for  the  first  time. 
He  saw  at  once,  ^dth  the  unerring  eye  of  a  great 
soldier,  the  key  to  the  position,  and  when  his 
advice  had  been  taken  and  Toulon  had  fallen, 
he  was  a  man  of  distinction. 

Major  Bonaparte  was  at  this  time  twenty-four 
years  of  age.  He  was  an  officer  of  the  old  army, 
having  been  regularly  educated  at  the  military 
school  at  Brienne,  and  having  served  continu- 
ously from  the  time  of  his  graduation.  While 
at  Brienne  he  was  known  for  his  intense  applica- 
tion to  his  studies,  and  he  left  the  school  with  a 
reputation  for  talent.  Unlike  most  army  officers, 
he  found  in  the  profession  of  arms  a  profession 
worthy  of  his  utmost  devotion.  He  read  and 
studied  the  great  campaigns  of  the  world.  He 
wrote  for  his  own  use  commentaries  and  criti' 
cisms  on  Caesar's  operations  in  Gaul  and  Fred- 
eric's camj)aigns  in  Saxony  and  Silesia.     Of  every 


TOULON  AND  ITALY.  13 

species  of  military  knowledge  he  was  a  serious 
and  accurate  student.  He  was,  moreover,  as  at- 
tentive to  the  dry  details  of  the  art  as  he  was 
fond  of  studying'  its  higher  branches.  No  man 
in  the  army  had  a  more  sure  eye  for  ground, 
could  estimate  more  certainly  what  coidd  and 
could  not  be  effected  by  a  battery  placed  here  or 
placed  there,  whether  a  column  of  troops  could 
or  could  not  reach  a  given  point  by  such  or 
such  a  time.  Nay,  more  than  this,  no  captain 
of  a  company  knew  better  than  he  whether  the 
rations  furnished  to  the  men  were  what  they 
should  be  or  not ;  Napoleon  to  the  end  of  his 
days  was  a  good  judge  of  the  common  soldier's 
soup  and  bread.  Let  me  illustrate  the  care  with 
which  he  would  look  after  little  things.  Long 
after  the  time  of  which  I  am  speaking,  when  he 
had  become  Emperor,  he  was  one  day  inspecting 
the  Invalides,  the  home  for  aged  and  disabled  sol- 
diers in  Paris,  and  the  matron  was  showing  him 
the  chests  of  drawers  where  the  soldiers'  linen 
was  put.  He  bade  her  open  a  drawer  :  "  I  sup- 
pose you  know,"  said  he,  "  how  to  arrange  these 
shirts  when  they  come  back  from  the  wash." 
The  good  woman  hesitated,  and  the  Emperor 
then  explained  that  the  proper  way  was  to  put 
those  newly  washed  at  the  bottom  of  the  drawer, 
so  that  the  same  garments  should  not  be  worn 
and  washed  continually.  I  mention  this  to  illus- 
trate his  love  of  detail  and  of  exactness.  Notlv 
ing  was  too  small  for  hii?i. 


14  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  promptitude  with 
which  he  despatched  the  Toulon  business  showed 
not  only  the  mind  of  the  master,  but  the  wide 
and  careful  study  which  takes  the  place  of  ex- 
perience. Here,  when  he  arrived,  was  a  poor 
and  small  army,  under  poor  generals,  attempting 
a  task  entirely  beyond  its  strength  :  that  of  lay- 
ing siege  to  the  large  and  strongly  fortified  city 
of  Toulon.  Bonaparte  not  only  pointed  out  to 
the  generals  that  with  their  present  resources 
success  in  such  an  operation  was  wholly  imprac- 
ticable, but  he  showed  them  that  there  was  no 
necessity  of  attempting  it ;  that  the  defence  of 
the  place  depended  entirely  on  the  presence  of 
the  fleet  in  the  harbor,  and  that  the  capture  of 
a  certain  promontory,  I'Eguillette,  would  enable 
the  French  to  compel  the  evacuation  of  the  har- 
bor. His  counsel  was  followed,  and  the  proper 
steps  were  taken  to  reduce  the  works  which  the 
English  had  erected  to  maintain  their  position. 
In  the  meanwhile  the  young  major  reformed  the 
artillery  service  of  the  army  and  doubled  its  effi- 
ciency. When  the  time  came,  the  French  car- 
ried the  English  fort,  Mulgrave,  erected  their 
batteries  on  I'Eguillette,  and  the  British  fleet 
sailed  away.  How  long  the  siege  might  have 
lasted  had  not  the  major  opportunely  arrived,  it 
is  hard  to  tell.  But  every  man  in  that  army,  and 
what  was  more  important  perhaps  at  that  time  to 
the  major,  the  deputies  of  the  Convention,  who 
had  come  down  from  Paris  to  push  the  siege 


TOULON  AND  ITALY.  15 

vigorously,  felt  that  in  Bonaparte  they  had  an 
officer  of  great  capacity,  who  thoroughly  knew 
his  profession.  He  became  at  once  one  of  the 
men  of  mark,  one  of  those  to  be  relied  on  in  cir- 
cumstances of  difficulty  and  danger.  He  was 
without  delay  appointed  to  the  rank  of  general 
of  brigade  in  the  army  which  was  operating  near 
Nice,  and  he  very  soon,  by  his  skilful  manoeuvres, 
enabled  the  French  commander  to  turn  the  Aus- 
trian positions  which  he  had  been  idly  threaten- 
ing for  weeks,  and  to  take  up  a  new  and  much 
more  advantageous  situation. 

At  this  time,  the  close  of  the  year  1793  and 
the  early  part  of  the  year  1794,  Robespierre  was 
at  the  head  of  France  and  governed  her  with  a 
ruthless  fanaticism,  of  which  I  need  not  to  speak 
here.  The  fall  of  Toulon  was  followed  by  whole- 
sale executions.  With  these  atrocities  Napo- 
leon would  have  nothing  to  do.  Even  Lanfrey, 
who  invariably  makes  the  worst  of  the  subject  of 
his  biography,  admits  frankly  that  all  these  harsh 
and  barbarous  doings  were  abhorrent  to  Napo- 
leon's nature,  and  that  he  did  what  he  could  to 
shield  those  unfortunates  who  came  under  the 
suspicion  of  the  authorities.  As  to  this  side  of 
Napoleon's  character,  we  may  as  well  pause  here 
a  moment  and  consider  it.  In  spite  of  all  the 
battles  that  he  fought,  and  all  the  death,  wounds, 
sickness,  and  misery  inseparable  from  such  vast 
military  operations  as  for  twenty  years  he  con- 
ducted, it  may  safely  be  affirmed  that  Napoleon 


16  THE   FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

was  not  a  harsh,  still  less  a  cruel  man.  All  the 
contemporary  writers  of  any  authority  admit  this 
in  so  many  words,  even  though  they  may  con- 
sider his  comparative  indifference  to  all  this  suf- 
fering almost  as  bad  as  cruelty  or  harshness,  and 
even  though  they  can  point  to  some  incidents  in 
his  career  that  certainly  look  hke  both.^  But 
the  popular  accusation  of  Napoleon  on  this  head 
proceeds  on  the  mistaken  notion  that  to  conduct 
so  many  wars  a  man  must  have  a  very  hard  heart. 
A  little  reflection,  however,  will  show  that  this 
need  not  be  so  at  all.  A  statesman  deciding  on 
war  may  no  doubt  often  be  charged  rightly  with 
not  having  sufficiently  considered  the  miseries 
which  his  decision  must  involve.  But,  cul- 
pable as  this  is,  it  does  not  show  any  unusual  in- 
difference to  human  suffering :  it  is  merely  the 
failure  properly  to  bring  these  wretched  inci- 
dents of  war  before  the  mind  ;  it  is  a  deficiency 
in  imagination.  Twenty  odd  years  ago  we  were 
plunged  into  a  great  war ;  we  may  perhaps  fair- 
ly hold  that  those  who  brought  it  about  were 
in  their  intense  political  excitement  inexcus- 
ably careless  of  the  sufferings  which  a  great 
war  must  occasion ;  but  none  of  us  ever  accused 
any  of  them  of  being  personally  harsh  or  cruel 
people.  Napoleon,  bred  in  a  military  school, 
wrapped  up  in  the  military  profession,  undoubt- 
edly considered  war  as  the  shortest  and  best  way 
of  settling  all  political  disputes  ;  and,  very  likely, 

^See  Appendix  L 


TOULON  AND  ITALY.  17 

as  a  military  man,  "  a  man  of  war  from  his 
youth,"  many  of  the  incidents  of  a  camjjaign 
which  to  the  civiHan  mind  are  most  distressing 
were  so  familiar  that  it  never  occurred  to  him  to 
notice  them.  As  the  ruler  of  the  French  Empire 
he  no  doubt  often  resorted  to  war  when  any  one 
in  his  place  not  a  military  man,  and  accustomed  as 
he  was  to  military  methods,  would  have  chosen 
some  peaceful  mode  of  action.  When  at  the 
head  of  an  army,  careful  as  he  undeniably  was 
of  his  soldiers'  welfare  in  all  respects,  he  used 
them,  as  any  general  who  expects  to  win  a  battle 
must  use  them,  with  a  single  eye  to  the  success 
of  the  day,  and  without  allowing  the  imagination 
to  raise  disturbing  pictures  of  wounds  and  death. 
Just  so,  a  surgeon,  devoted  to  his  profession, 
magnifying  its  importance,  may  resort  to  an  op- 
eration when  his  professional  brother,  the  phy- 
sician, would  have  counselled  milder  treatment ; 
and,  when  he  is  performing  the  operation,  he 
must,  if  he  is  a  good  surgeon,  use  the  knife  un- 
shrinkingly. Yet  we  all  know  that  it  would  be 
very  erroneous  for  us  to  attribute  to  such  a  sur- 
geon any  special  harshness  of  temper  or  indiffer- 
ence to  human  suffering.  Bearing  these  princi- 
ples and  keeping  these  analogies  in  mind,  we 
shall  understand,  I  think,  pretty  clearly  what 
can  and  what  cannot  fairly  be  alleged  against 
Napoleon  in  this  regard.  He  was,  as  I  have 
said,  a  soldier,  born  and  bred ;  he  was  all  his 
life  in  the  army ;  he  had  a  genius  for  war,  and 


18  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

was  skilful  and  successful  beyond  measure  in 
military  operations.  If  he  sometimes  engaged  in 
a  war  when  one  more  alive  to  its  evils  would 
have  avoided  it,  he  never  countenanced  unneces- 
sary or  purposeless  fighting.  With  him,  a  battle 
was  always  a  serious  and  a  critical  matter ;  the 
troops  were  spared  as  much  as  possible  before- 
hand ;  it  was  always  his  plan  to  make  the  en- 
counter a  decisive  one,  and  for  this  end  he 
spared  no  pains.  In  his  attention  to  the  sick 
and  wounded  he  has  never  been  surpassed. 

Let  us  now  return  to  our  story.  Seven 
months  after  the  fall  of  Toulon  occurred  the 
Revolution  of  the  Ninth  of  Thermidor,  by  which 
Robespierre  and  his  chief  associates  were 
brought  to  the  block,  to  the  immense  relief  of 
everybody.  The  Convention,  freed  from  the  tyr- 
anny of  the  Jacobin  Club,  resumed  its  author- 
ity. But  the  people  had  ceased  to  respect  the 
Convention.  The  Reig^n  of  Terror  had  worked 
a  great  change  m  public  opinion.  The  interests 
of  property  and  of  social  order  began  to  assert 
themselves.  Moderate  men  saw  that  the  experi- 
ment of  governing  France  by  a  National  Assem- 
bly had  resulted  in  a  government  by  factions, 
oppressive  and  iniquitous  beyond  example,  and 
they  demanded  some  security  against  a  recur- 
rence of  similar  evils.  Even  the  partisans  of  the 
monarchy  began  to  show  their  heads.  It  was 
clear  that  the  government  must  undergo  some 
transformation  if  France  was  to  retain  the  ben- 


TOULON  AND  ITALY.  19 

efits  of  the  Revolution.  In  1795,  therefore,  a 
new  constitution  was  adopted,  which  gave  the 
executive  power  to  five  Directors.  In  this  and 
other  respects  the  new  arrangement  was  an  ad- 
vance towards  a  conservative  solution  of  the  rev- 
olutionary problem.  But  the  republicans  in  the 
convention  had  no  notion  of  running  the  risk  of 
having  their  work  undone  by  a  royalist  reaction„ 
There  were  many  signs  of  a  widespread  change 
in  the  popular  feeling,  and  in  such  an  inflamma- 
ble country  as  France  a  sudden  overthrow  was 
among  the  possibilities  to  be  guarded  against. 
Accordingly  it  was  provided  in  the  new  consti- 
tution that  two  thirds  of  the  existing-  convention 
should  be  members  of  the  new  legislature,  and 
that,  after  the  first  election,  only  one  third  of  the 
members  should  annually  go  out  of  office.  This 
device,  so  well  calculated  to  ensure  to  the  repub- 
licans the  control  of  the  country  for  some  years 
at  any  rate,  was  unpopular  with  the  reactionary 
party,  who  were  foolish  enough  to  try  a  resort 
to  arms.  Bonaparte  was  charged  by  the  con- 
vention with  the  defence  of  the  government. 
The  "sections,"  as  they  were  called,  of  Paris 
rose  on  the  13th  of  Vendemiaire,  or  the  4th 
of  October,  1795 ;  but,  formidable  as  the  insur- 
rection had  appeared,  it  was  easily  quelled. 
General  Bonaparte  had  by  great  personal  exer- 
tions collected  a  sufficient  number  of  guns  com- 
manding all  the  approaches  to  the  Tuileries, 
against    which    the   attack  was    directed.     His 


20  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

orders  were  explicit,  his  soldiers  were  steady, 
the  o-uns  did  their  work.  The  moh  of  Paris  had 
at  last  met  its  match. 

During  the  autumn  of  this  year,  1795,  Gen- 
eral Bonaparte  made  the  acquaintance  of  Ma- 
dame Beauharnais,  a  lady  somewhat  older  than 
himself,  whose  husband,  an  officer  of  rank,  had 
perished  in  the  Revolution ;  and  early  in  1796 
they  were  married.  She  was  a  woman  of  un- 
common wit  and  fascination,  and  of  considerable 
beauty,  and  Bonaparte  was  devotedly  attached 
to  her.  On  her  side  there  was  unquestionably 
also  a  strono-  feeling;  of  admiration  for  her  bus- 
band,  and  of  pride  in  his  talents  and  character ; 
and  she  loved  him,  it  would  seem,  with  an  affec- 
tion which,  while  it  certainly  was  not  as  strong 
as  his  at  the  outset,  increased  as  time  went  on. 
Josephine  was  well  aware  of  her  powers  of  fas- 
cination, and  in  the  earlier  part  of  their  married 
life  caused  her  husband  great  vexation,  and  even 
apprehension,  by  her  course  in  society.  She  was 
also  a  most  extravagant  person,  to  whose  mind 
the  economy,  order,  and  exactitude  that  Napo- 
leon insisted  on  in  the  public  service,  and  would 
gladly  have  carried  into  his  household,  were  dis- 
agreeable, and  in  fact  insupportable.  She  caused 
him  great  annoyance  by  her  lavish  expenditures, 
and  frequently  excited  his  anger  by  her  loohsh 
attempts  at  prevarication  when  interrogated  as  to 
the  amount  of  her  debts.  Josephine  was  a  good 
woman  and  a  clever  one,  but  she  did  not  possess 


TOULON  AND  ITALY.  21 

a  well-informed  mind,  or  a  strong  and  deep  na- 
ture, or  a  well-balanced  character.  Still  she 
loved  her  husband,  and  assisted  him  to  the  best 
of  her  ability.  At  any  rate  she  was  the  only 
woman  whom  Napoleon  ever  loved,  in  the  strict 
sense  of  that  word ;  and  she  always  possessed 
great  influence  over  him,  an  influence  that, 
whatever  may  have  been  his  occasional  infideli- 
ties, was  shared  by  no  other  woman  ;  and  their 
married  life  was  undoubtedly  a  really  happy  one. 
In  his  letters  to  Josephine,  and  in  all  that  he 
says  about  her,  we  see  the  best  side  of  Napo- 
leon's character ;  and  no  one  familiar  with  the 
facts  can  fail  to  recognize  the  true  affection  and 
confidence  that  existed  between  them,  despite 
occasional  misunderstandings.  Of  the  divorce,  I 
must  S23eak  later ;  suffice  it  to  say  now,  that,  as 
every  one  knows,  it  was  not  the  result  of  any 
disagreement  between  them. 

Immediately  after  his  marriage  General  Bona- 
parte took  command  of  the  Army  of  Italy,  to 
which  post  he  had  just  been  appointed  by  the 
Directory.  He  arrived  in  Nice  on  the  27th  of 
March,  1796.  In  this  region  the  French  armies 
had  been  for  some  two  years  or  more  opposing 
the  troops  of  the  King  of  Sardinia  and  the  Em- 
peror- of  Austria,  but  without  achie\dug  anything 
of  great  importance.  The  French  forces  were 
inferior  in  numbers,  discipline,  and  equipment  to 
those  of  the  allies,  but  it  was  soon  to  be  seen 
what  a  man  of  first-rate  ability  could  accomplish 
ao'ainst  odds. 


22  THE   FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

I  shall  not,  of  course,  attempt  to  describe  in 
any  detail  the  camj^aigiis  of  General  Bonaparte 
in  Italy.  No  military  operations  can  be  under- 
stood without  close  study,  and  those  of  1796 
and  1797  were  often  extremely  complicated.  It 
is  not  worth  our  while  to  follow  them  too  closely. 
Let  me,  however,  try  to  give  you  a  general 
notion  of  the  plan  of  Napoleon. 

Many  of  you  no  doubt  have  been  in  Nice, 
and  have  made  the  journey  from  Nice  to  Genoa 
either  by  the  Corniche  road,  which  skirts  the 
shore  of  the  Mediterranean,  or  by  the  railroad, 
which  pursues  substantially  the  same  route.  You 
recollect,  perhaps,  how  the  Maritime  Alps,  which 
are  a  chain  of  mountains  running  generally  par- 
allel with  the  line  of  the  coast,  and  sending  out 
their  spurs  almost  to  the  sea,  shut  off  the  Riviera 
di  Ponente,  with  its  lovely  villages,  Mentone, 
Ventimiglia,  San  Remo,  Finale,  Savona,  and  the 
others,  from  the  rest  of  the  world.  The  French 
Army  of  Italy  was  scattered  along  the  Riviera 
from  Nice  almost  as  far  as  Genoa.  Nice  was  its 
base  of  supplies.  Behind  the  first  ranges  of 
mountains,  in  detachments  occupying  the  moun- 
tain villages,  in  positions  lying  to  the  north  of 
those  occupied  by  the  French,  was  the  main 
body  of  the  Sardinian  or  Piedmontese  army,  con- 
necting on  its  left,  that  is  at  the  easterly  end  of 
its  line,  and  to  the  north  or  northeast  of  Savona, 
"wath  the  Austrian  troops. 

Napoleon's  base  of  operations  was,  as  I  have 


TOULON  AND  ITALY.  23 

said,  Nice  ;  his  communications  were  confined  to 
the  Corniche  road,  or  rather  to  the  jjath  which 
then  existed,  such  as  it  was,  for  the  magnificent 
Corniche  road  was  begun  by  him.  The  difficulties 
in  undertaking  operations  in  the  neighborhood 
of  Genoa,  on  account  both  of  the  distance  from 
his  base,  and  of  the  possibihty  of  his  single  line 
of  communication  being  imperilled  by  a  descent 
from  the  English  fleet,  which  was  watching  the 
coast  of  the  Riviera  for  an  opportunity  to  do 
mischief,  were  obvious.  But  he  saw  that  the 
enemy's  troops  were  also  occupying  a  long  line, 
and  were  much  separated  and  scattered,  and  that 
a  concentrated  attack  on  an  important  part  of 
that  Hue,  if  successful,  would  lead  to  great  re- 
sults. 

The  thing  to  do  was,  if  possible,  to  separate 
the  two  armies,  to  interpose  between  the  Sar- 
dinian and  Austrian  forces,  and  to  deal  with  each 
separately.  To  do  this  it  was  necessary  to  op- 
erate at  a  great  distance  from  Nice,  because  the 
Austrian  right  was  not  advanced  much  beyond 
Genoa.  The  project  was  a  most  daring  one,  and 
it  required  all  Napoleon's  unerring  skill  and 
unceasing  activity  to  give  it  a  chance  of  suc- 
cess. But  his  temperament  was  hopeful ;  of  two 
courses  he  invariably  preferred  the  bolder,  and 
the  greater  the  risk,  the  more  interest  he  always 
took  in  the  game.  He  concentrated  his  army 
at  or  near  Savona,  pushed  his  troops  up  through 
the  passes,  overcame  by  the  superiority  of  force 


24  THE   FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

which  his  greater  military  capacity  procured  for 
him  the  Austrian  and  Sardinian  troops  that  at- 
tempted to  bar  his  progress  ;  crossed  the  Mari- 
time Alps ;  interposed  between  the  Sardinian 
and  Austrian  armies  ;  and,  holding  the  latter 
in  check  by  skilfully  manoeuvring  with  a  small 
fraction  of  his  army,  threw  the  bulk  of  his 
forces  upon  the  Sardinians,  defeated  them  again 
and  again,  and  finally  extorted  a  separate  peace 
from  the  Sardinian  government.  Then,  turning 
upon  the  Austrians,  he  outmanoeuvred  them  in 
crossing  the  Po,  and,  after  the  gallant  affair  of 
the  Bridge  of  Lodi,  where  he  seized  the  oppor- 
tunity of  making  his  own  personal  courage 
known  to  his  troops,  he  entered  the  city  of 
Milan,  the  capital  of  Austrian  Lombardy. 

Nothing  so  striking  and  brilliant  had  been 
seen  since  the  time  of  Charles  XII.  of  Sweden. 
Europe  was  astonished,  France  elated  beyond 
measure.  Nor  did  his  successes  stop  here.  The 
Austrian  government  replaced  their  general,  an 
octogenarian  by  the  name  of  Beaulieu,  by  an- 
other brave  old  veteran,  Wurmser,  but  he  was 
beaten  over  and  over  again,  and  finally  forced  to 
take  refuge  in  Mantua.  Their  next  general,  Al- 
vinzi,  though  having  the  advantage  of  dealing 
with  a  force  that  had  been  seriously  depleted, 
for  the  successes  of  the  French  had  cost  them 
dear,  was  no  more  fortunate  than  his  predeces- 
sors ;  and  though,  during  the  terrible  three  days 
of   fighting    at   the  Bridge    of    Areola,   victory 


To  e/lt.  Cenis 


# 


Benedettd 


+  1 
ll 


I    t 


^^»>* 
^.?*^,  -«^, 


'  ;  ■£'   e  >1    /    P  ^/^, »,, 


LIAN  CAMPAIGN  OF   1796. 

Situation  of  the  Armies  on  the  15th.  of  April. 

Scale  of  Miles. 

a  10 2a  JQ 40  5j3 


Prencli 

French  Headquarters, 

Austrians 


Aiistriau    Headquarters, 

Sardinians, 

Sardluiau    Headquarters, 


+ 


aufKto,  K.  r. 


TOULON  AND  ITALY.  25 

seemed  undecided,  the  daring  and  skill  of  Bona- 
parte at  last  prevailed,  and  the  brilliant  action 
of  Rivoli  crowned  a  campaign  which  had  been 
illustrated  by  desperate  and  persistent  courage, 
as  well  as  by  wonderful  fertility  of  resource. 
Finally,  the  great  Archduke  Charles  himself, 
reputed  the  best  general  of  the  continent,  was 
sent  into  Italy ;  but  he  soon  found  that  with  a 
discouraged  and  weakened  army  he  was  utterly 
unable  to  hold  his  own  aofainst  the  invaders.  On 
the  18th  of  April,  1797,  just  a  year  from  the 
crossing  of  the  Maritime  Alps,  the  preHminaries 
of  peace  were  signed  at  Leoben,  and  were  fol- 
lowed in  six  months  by  the  treaty  of  Campo 
Formio. 

During  the  progress  of  the  war,  the  French 
had  come  into  contact  with  nearly  all  the  ItaUan 
states ;  with  the  Duchies  of  Parma,  Modena, 
Tuscany ;  ^^dth  the  oligarchical  republics  of  Ge- 
noa and  Venice ;  and  with  the  States  of  the 
Church.  It  would  be  tedious  and  unprofitable 
for  me  to  attempt  to  give  the  facts  in  detail. 
All  that  it  is  necessary  for  us  to  take  into  account 
here  is,  that  the  advent  of  the  French  meant  to 
these  populations  escape  from  the  misgovern- 
ment  under  which  they  labored,  and  a  participa- 
tion in  the  grand  movement  toward  equal  rights 
and  privileges  inaugurated  by  France.  The 
sentunent  which  welcomed  the  French  existed 
chiefly  in  the « middle  and  upper  classes  ;  the 
ignorant  peasantry,  led  by  their  bigoted  priests. 


26  TEE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

were  equally  averse  to  foreign  intervention  and 
to  new  ideas.  Bonaparte  played  skilfully  the 
part  he  had  to  play  ;  he  recognized  fully  that  all 
these  little  princes  and  potentates  desired  to  see 
him  beaten  by  the  Austrians ;  he  heard  their 
mutterings  whenever  his  luck  seemed  for  the 
moment  to  fail  ;  he  knew  that  he  owed  them 
nothing ;  but  he  did  the  best  he  could  for  the 
popidations.  The  city  of  Venice  and  its  ad- 
joinino^  possessions  he  was  compelled  to  resign 
to  Austiia  as  a  necessary  condition  of  peace  ; 
but  Austrian  Lombardy,  with  the  states  of  Mo- 
dena,  Reggio.  Bologna,  and  Ferrara,  and  a  part 
of  the  Venetian  territory  were  organized  into  a 
new  state  by  the  name  of  the  Cisalpine  Eepub- 
hc,  which  we  may  probably  consider  as  the  germ 
of  the  united  Italy  of  to-day.  This  new  repub- 
Kc  received  a  democratic  constitution,  and  though 
no  doubt  the  work  of  organization  was  very  has- 
tily and  very  imperfectly  done,  yet  the  change 
was  imquestionably  a  change  for  the  better  in 
all  that  constitutes  liberal  and  just  government. 
The  objects  of  the  war  had  been  attained  m 
forcing  Austria  to  make  peace,  and  ia  gaining 
such  soHd  pohtical  benefits  for  the  ItaHan  neigh- 
bors of  the  French  republic. 

The  war.  too.  had  been  the  making:  of  the  sue- 
cessful  general.  His  reputation  was  of  a  differ- 
ent kind  from  that  of  the  other  distinguished 
generals  of  the  republic :  it  was  not  founded  on 
a  single  great  battle,  like  that  of  Jourdan,  or  on 


TOULON  AND  ITALY.  27 

a  well  conducted  retreat,  like  that  o£  Moreaii, 
nor  on  an  almost  unopposed,  though  skilfully 
conducted  invasion,  like  that  of  Pichegru.  It 
was  far  higher  than  any  of  these.  Bonaparte 
had  been  tried  in  his  year  of  fighting  in  Italy  in 
every  sort  of  way,  and  he  had  risen  superior  to 
every  obstacle.  Difficulties  of  transportation  and 
communication,  lack  of  siege  equipage,  of  pon- 
toon trains,  of  clothing  and  equipment,  had  aU 
been  overcome.  Again  and  again  heavy  numer- 
ical odds  had  been  encountered,  and  again  and 
again  had  his  unwearied  diligence  and  alertness, 
his  imperturbably  clear  head,  and  his  hopeful 
and  daring  courage  extorted  victory  where  es- 
cape even  seemed  well-nigh  hojDeless.  Here  in 
these  camjiaigns  in  Italy  he  laid  the  foundations 
of  that  extraordinary  hold  which  he  always  had 
over  the  soldiers  of  liis  armies.  He  was  ever 
with  them,  seeing  to  everything  himself,  observ- 
ing the  enemy  with  his  own  eye,  and  several 
times,  at  any  rate,  leading  on  his  grenadiers 
sword  in  hand.  At  Lodi  he  was  the  second  man 
across  the  bridge.  At  Areola,  where  not  even 
his  example  could  carry  the  men  over,  he  was 
in  the  iiicUe  forced  off  the  causeway  into  the 
marshes.  Such  a  commander  as  this  had  never 
been  seen.  He  was  the  idol  of  the  army.^  The 
soldiers  believed  in  him  implicitly.  Many  of 
the  men  who  fought  at  Lodi  and  Areola  and 
CastigHone  and  Rivoli  lived  to  see  the  sun  of 

^  See  Appendix  II. 


28  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

Austerlitz  and  the  snows  of  Russia.  Here  too,  in 
these  Italian  wars,  were  recognized  for  the  first 
time  some  of  the  great  generals  of  the  period. 
Of  these  Augereau  was  perhaps  the  most  distin- 
guished at  that  time ;  but,  following  close  on  his 
steps,  certainly,  was  a  far  abler  soldier,  Massena, 
who  was  one  of  the  two  or  three  ablest  of  Napo- 
leon's lieutenants,  and  of  whom  the  Duke  of 
Wellington  used  to  say  that  he  gave  him  more 
anxiety  than  any  of  those  of  Najjoleon's  marshals 
to  whom  he  had  ever  been  ojjposed.  Massena 
was  a  thorough  soldier,  a  man  very  fertile  in  re- 
sources, very  daring,  and  very  resolute.  Lannes, 
also,  another  man  of  first-rate  ability,  came  under 
the  eye  of  Napoleon  in  these  campaigns. 

It  is  time  that  we  returned  to  France.  While 
Bonaparte  was  settling  the  terms  of  the  treaty 
with  Austria,  France  was  undergoing  another  con- 
stitutional change.  Another  movement,  aimed, 
like  that  of  the  Sections  of  Paris  in  1795,  at 
weakening  the  extreme  republican  party,  found 
its  expression  in  the  elections  of  1797,  and  was 
favored  by  two  of  the  five  Directors.  We  find 
it  impossible,  with  the  very  inadequate  means  at 
our  command,  to  apportion  praise  or  blame  to 
the  actors  in  these  almost  forcfotten  crises  with 
any  great  certainty  of  being  right  in  our  award. 
Nor  is  it  necessary  for  us  to  attempt  this  task. 
These  crises  seem  to  me  to  be  the  natural  se- 
quelce,  as  the  doctors  would  say,  of  a  severe  rev- 


TOULON  AND  ITALY.  29 

olution.  Astronomers  tell  us  that  the  celestial 
bodies,  from  having  once  been  in  a  state  of  high 
incandescence,  have  by  degrees  cooled  down  and 
become  contracted  in  size,  and  that  this  process 
is  attended  by  certain  geological  catastrophes. 
In  like  manner  it  was  to  be  expected  that 
France,  in  her  cooling  down  from  the  white  heat 
of  her  Revolution,  must  have  her  \dolent  con- 
tractions and  convulsive  epochs  of  refrigeration. 
One  of  these  was  the  13th  of  Vendemiau-e, 
1795,  when  Bonaparte  put  down  the  rising  of 
the  Sections ;  one  was  the  18th  of  Fructidor, 
1797,  of  which  we  are  now  speaking;  another 
was  the  18th  of  Brumaire,  1799,  of  which  we 
shall  speak  soon.  Of  this  crisis,  then,  which 
culminated  in  the  revolution  or  coup  cVetat  of 
the  18th  of  Fructidor,  1797,  all  that  we  need 
know  is  that  the  army,  which  was  still  un- 
touched by  the  reactionary  influence  which  had 
of  late  been  quite  perceptible  in  Paris,  declared 
its  intention  of  standing  by  the  three  Directors 
who  were  opposed  to  the  Assembly  ;  that  Bona- 
parte sent  Augereau  to  Paris  with  a  division  of 
troops ;  that  the  two  Directors  who  were  in  sym- 
pathy with  the  Assembly  were  promptly  disposed 
of ;  that  a  great  many  persons  were  proscribed, 
banished  to  the  colonies,  and  imprisoned;  and 
in  short,  that  the  three  successful  Directors  ruled 
matters  with  a  hio-h  hand. 

It  is  important  for  us  to  take  aU  this  into  ac- 
count for  one  reason  especially,  and  that  is,  that 


30  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

it  was  this  republic,  so  called,  this  government 
of  the  18th  of  Fructidor,  1797,  which  Bona- 
parte overthrew  on  the  18th  of  Brumaire,  1799, 
when  he  assumed  control  of  the  government. 
Many  persons  ignorantly  talk  about  Napoleon's 
having  enslaved  France,  destroyed  free  institu- 
tions, and  so  forth.  Do  not  let  us  forget  that 
what  he  destroyed  in  1799  was  the  arbitrary  and 
irres^Donsible  rule  of  these  three  Directors.  You 
yaH  find  that  Lanfrey,  speaking  of  this  coiq) 
d'etat  of  the  18th  of  Fructidor,  1797,  calls  the 
Directors  "  triumvirs,"  says  that  all  liberty  of 
the  press  was  destroyed,  that  France  was  en- 
slaved, and  that  all  was  ready  for  a  military  dic- 
tatorship ;  yet  when  this  consistent  and  veracious 
writer  comes  to  treat  of  the  18th  of  Brumaire, 
1799,  when  Napoleon  by  another  coup  d'etat 
put  down  this  Directory,  you  would  suj)pose,  to 
judge  from  the  way  he  speaks  of  the  subject, 
that  Bonaparte  was  pulHng  down  a  republic  at 
least  as  orderly  and  constitutional  as  that  of 
Massachusetts.     But  we  are  anticipating. 

The  winter  of  1797  and  1798  was  passed  by 
General  Bonaparte  in  Paris.  During  this  period 
the  expedition  to  Egypt  was  jDrojected.  It  is 
difficult  to  assign  a  good  reason  for  this  unnec- 
essary and  hazardous  undertaking.  It  seems 
quite  probable  that  the  Directory  had  their 
heads  turned  by  the  recent  successes  in  Italy; 
they  were  eagerly  launching  out  in  every  direc- 
tion, and  were  evidently  excited  with  the  hope  of 


TOULON  AND  ITALY.  31 

gaining  important  acquisitions  beyond  the  sea. 
And  it  is  quite  likely  that  Bonaparte  himself,  who 
possessed  together  with  a  clear  and  sound  judg- 
ment on  means  and  methods  a  very  vivid  and 
enterprising  imagination,  allowed  himself  to  en- 
tertain great  ideas  about  the  conquest  of  the 
East.  At  any  rate  he  always,  to  the  end  of  his 
days,  talked  in  this  strain  regarding  this  episode 
of  his  life.  Viewed,  however,  from  the  stand- 
point of  the  needs  and  welfare  of  France,  no  un- 
dertaking could  well  be  more  preposterous  than 
an  expedition  to  Egypt.  It  is  true  that  at  that 
time  there  still  existed  a  French  fleet ;  but  nei- 
ther at  that  time  nor  at  any  other  time  were  the 
French  superior  to  the  English  on  the  seas.  How 
absurd,  then,  was  the  project  of  sending  a  power- 
fid  French  army  to  Egypt,  whence  its  only  possi- 
ble communication  with  home  must  be  by  water  ! 
At  this  time,  too,  the  political  horizon  was  far 
from  clear.  Austria  seemed  on  the  brink  of  re- 
commencing the  struggle,  and  it  looked  as  if  the 
Czar  Paul  would  throw  his  sword  into  the  scale 
against  the  French  republic  and  its  young  chent 
republics.  It  was  an  act  of  absolute  folly  on 
the  part  of  the  Directory  to  embark  in  such  a 
distant  and  uncalled-for  and  unprofitable  ven- 
ture. 

The  expedition  to  Egypt  was,  however,  decided 
on,  and  it  sailed  in  May,  1798.  Taking  Malta 
on  the  way,  the  French  vessels  arrived  safely  at 
Alexandria  without  the  knowledge  of  the  British 


32  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

fleet,  whicli  under  Lord  Nelson  was  flying  hither 
and  thither  in  hopes  of  intercepting  them.  It 
may  show  us  how  the  world  has  gone  ahead  in 
some  respects  to  recall  the  fact  that  this  expedi- 
tion, which  left  Toulon  on  the  18th  of  May,  did 
not  land  at  Alexandria  till  the  last  of  June ! 
Alexandria  and  Rosetta  fell  without  a  struggle, 
and  the  army  set  out  for  Cairo  early  in  July. 
But  it  will  not  be  worth  our  while  to  pursue  the 
fortunes  of  the  Egyptian  expedition.  It  is  so 
evidently  an  outside  matter,  so  entirely  discon- 
nected with  the  march  of  events  in  Europe,  that 
we  had  better  leave  the  French  army  trudging 
through  the  sands  along  the  banks  of  the  Nile 
under  the  shadow  of  the  pyramids,  and  return  to 
Italy. 

What  I  am  particularly  trying  to  direct  your 
attention  to  in  this  investigation  is  the  general 
character  of  the  contest  that  was  being  waged 
between  France  and  her  dependencies,  on  the  one 
hand,  and  the  rest  of  Europe,  on  the  other.  It 
is  represented  by  most  English  writers  as  a  mere 
struggle  for  territory,  for  power,  or  even  as  a 
war  of  spoliation  on  the  part  of  France.  The 
sacred  rights  of  nationality  were,  it  is  alleged, 
wantonly  invaded  and  trampled  on  by  the  re- 
publicans. The  resistance  to  the  armies  of 
France  was  inspired  by  the  most  sacred  motives 
of  patriotism. 

Let  us  now  examine  these  assertions  with  a 
little  care.    We  will  take  an  example.    The  king* 


TOULON  AND  ITALY,  33 

dom  of  Naples,  over  which  ruled  a  branch  of  the 
house  of  Bourbon,  may  serve  as  our  illustration. 
The  court,  the  priests,  and  the  lazzaroni  consti- 
tuted one  party ;  the  enlightened  part  of  the  up- 
per class  and  the  middle  class  formed  the  other. 
It  would  be  impossible  to  say  which  were  the 
more  bigoted,  cruel,  or  tyrannical :  the  king,  or 
the  church,  or  the  mob.  The  government  was 
an  absolute  despotism,  and  the  despots  were  not 
only  absolute,  but,  what  is  worse,  they  were  cow- 
ardly, and  they  were  cruel.  On  mere  suspicion 
the  most  respectable  men  were  sent  to  the  loath- 
some jails,  often  never  to  be  taken  out  even  for 
examination.  Spies  and  informers  infested  the 
homes  and  places  of  business  of  well-to-do  citi- 
zens. People  of  education,  of  public  spirit,  of 
enlightenment,  were  suspected  of  favoring  French 
principles,  and  were  treated  with  a  rigor  wholly 
unjustifiable.  In  all  this  the  court  party  were 
fully  maintained  by  England.  In  fact,  the  wife 
of  the  English  minister,  the  celebrated  Lady 
Hamilton,  was  the  bosom  friend  of  Queen  Caro- 
line ;  and  Admiral  Lord  Nelson,  whose  mistress 
she  was,  supported  the  government  in  every 
measure  of  severe  repression. 

From  this  intolerable  state  of  things,  respec- 
table and  intelligent  people  in  Naples  looked  to 
France  as  to  a  deliverer  from  Middle  Age  barba- 
rism. Accordingly,  when  Ferdinand,  in  an  ac- 
cess of  rage  against  French  interference  with  the 
Papal  territories,  declared  war  against  France, 

3 


34  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

and  his  army,  under  the  redoubtable  Austrian 
general,  Mack,  Avhose  career  culminated  several 
years  later  at  Ulm,  was  defeated  and  dispersed 
in  its  encounters  with  the  French  army  under 
Championnet,  the  French,  when  they  entered 
Naples,  were  received  by  the  better  classes  with 
the  most  sincere  joy  and  relief,  but  by  the  laz- 
zaroni,  excited  to  fury  by  their  bigoted  priests, 
with  fanatical  hostility.  You  will  find  every- 
thinof  that  I  have  said  in  all  the  accounts ;  I  am 
not  aware  of  having  departed  a  jot  from  the 
standard  authorities,  —  and  I  ask  you  the  ques- 
tion. With  which  of  these  contesting  parties  is 
the  cause  of  progress,  of  civil  liberty,  of  enlight- 
enment ?  Is  it  with  the  French  invaders,  or  with 
the  rabble  of  Naples  ?  To  my  mind,  there  can 
be  but  one  answer  to  the  question.  I  am  not 
concerned  to  consider  whether  or  not  according 
to  the  practice  of  civilized  nations  the  doings  of 
the  French  in  Rome  gave  to  Ferdinand  a  legit- 
imate casus  belli.  I  am  free  to  say  that  I  do 
not  estimate  the  ignorant  patriotism  of  the  mob 
of  Naples  as  a  very  important  element  in  the  so- 
lution of  our  problem.  Those  persons  in  Naples 
who  were  competent  to  form  a  judgment  sided 
with  the  revolutionary  party,  and  welcomed  the 
assistance  of  the  French ;  and  I  think  they  were 
right.  The  question  of  relief  from  intolerable 
misgovernment,  bolstered  up  by  foreign  support, 
was  the  question  of  the  day  at  Naples.  And  no 
heated  declamation  about  patriotic  resistance  to 


TOULON  AND  ITALY.  35 

French   invasion   obscures  this   question  in    my 
mind. 

Substantially,  this  was  the  nature  of  the  con- 
test in  the  rest  of  Europe,  although  nowhere, 
probably,  was  the  precise  character  of  the  ques- 
tion made  so  clear  as  in  Naples.  But  in  the 
Papal  territories,  in  Austrian  Italy,  in  the  smaller 
fiefs  and  duchies  and  principalities  of  western 
Germany,  especially  in  Spain,  the  opposing  sides 
were  taken  by  very  much  the  same  classes  of  the 
population  as  we  have  seen  favoring  and  oppos- 
ing in  Naples  the  advent  of  the  French.  No 
doubt  the  French  often  abused  their  successes ; 
the  continual  wars  were  certainly  a  terrible  drain 
on  the  population,  and  on  the  patience  and  tem- 
per of  the  people ;  moreover,  the  presence  of  the 
foreigner  became  in  time  well-nigh  insupport- 
able, even  though  he  had  originally  been  the 
bringer  in  of  great  reforms.  Still,  however  true 
all  this  may  be,  it  is  a  total  perversion  of  the 
truth  to  represent  France  merely  as  a  conquering 
nation,  overrunning  its  neighbors  solely  from 
the  vulgar  greed  of  territory ;  or  to  dwell  so 
fondly  on  the  heroic  and  patriotic  conduct  of  the 
most  ignorant,  bigoted,  and  prejudiced  portions 
of  the  populations  of  these  states  in  resisting 
stoutly  the  invaders  of  their  soil.  In  point  of 
fact,  they  were  unwittingly  the  real  enemies  of 
their  several  countries  ;  they  did  what  they  could 
to  retard  then*  development,  to  retain  oppressive 
institutions,  to  keep  up  the  reign  of  intolerance 


36  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

and   of  superstition,   and   to   keep   out  humane 
legislation,  equal  rights,  and  religious  freedom. 

Let  us  follow  the  fortunes  of  the  revolution  in 
Naples  a  little  farther.  The  French,  as  I  have 
said,  entered  Naples,  to  the  great  relief  of  the 
better  part  of  the  people.  The  royal  family  fled 
to  Sicily.  A  new  government  was  organized, 
called  the  Parthenopsean  Republic,  which  was 
supported  by  most  of  the  best  citizens,  and  by 
many  of  the  most  distinguished  men  of  the 
kingdom.  But  the  enterprise  was,  so  far  as  the 
French  were  concerned,  an  ill-advised  one.  Bona- 
parte was  in  Egypt.  The  French  arms  met  with 
reverses  in  the  north  of  Italy,  and  Naples  had  to 
be  abandoned.  The  peasantry  under  Cardinal 
Ruffo  rose  against  the  new  republic.  Naples 
coidd  not  be  defended  against  these  fanatical 
hordes,  assisted  as  they  were  by  British  vessels 
of  war  in  the  harbor.  A  capitulation  was  signed, 
providing  for  the  safety  of  the  persons  and  prop- 
erty of  all  connected  with  the  revolution,  and 
an  amnesty  was  proclaimed.  For  those  who 
had  been  especially  compromised,  and  who  de- 
sired to  go  to  France,  passage  was  to  be  pro- 
vided. Suddenly  the  British  fleet,  under  Nelson 
himself,  appeared.  He  at  once  of  course  as- 
sumed command  of  all  the  British  vessels  in  the 
harbor.  One  of  his  ships  carried  Ferdinand  and 
his  Queen,  and  Sir  William  and  Lady  Hamilton. 
The  whole  capitulation  and  amnesty  were  set 
aside  as  a  compact  with  traitors.     The  unfortu- 


TOULON  AND  ITALY.  37 

nate  prisoners  were  executed  in  great  numbers, 
lu  vain  the  English  captains  who  had  signed  the 
papers  protested  that  the  honor  of  the  British 
flag  was  involved,  that  the  well  understood  code 
of  military  law  forbids  the  molestation  of  men 
who  with  arms  in  their  hands  have  been  allowed 
to  surrender.  To  all  these  remonstrances  Nel- 
son was  deaf.  He  was  himself  a  fanatic  on 
the  subject  of  the  divine  right  of  kings  ;  jDopu- 
lar  risings  were  abominations  in  his  eyes ;  and 
the  support  of  the  whole  abortive  attempt  by 
France  aggravated  his  rage.  Lady  Hamilton, 
as  I  have  said,  was  the  intimate  friend  of  the 
Queen,  and  the  Queen  was  most  implacable. 
Nelson  went  all  lengths.  He  allowed  officers  of 
the  republic  included  in  the  surrender  to  be 
tried  by  courts-martial  held  on  board  English 
vessels  of  war,  and  he  disgraced  the  British  flag 
by  hanging  at  least  one  of  them,  and  him  the 
most  distinguished.  Admiral  Caraccioli,  from  the 
yard-arm  of  an  English  frigate.  I  have  many 
a  time  seen  in  Naples,  in  the  Strada  di  Mer- 
gellina,  a  house  bearing  a  tablet  containing  an 
inscription  to  the  memory  of  this  unfortunate 
Vaan. 

It  is  not  at  all  with  the  view  of  attacking 
Lord  Nelson  that  I  have  adverted  to  this  painfid 
theme.  It  is  with  the  view  of  showing  you  by 
an  unmistakable  example  that  in  all  your  study 
of  this  epoch  you  must  expect  to  find  things  of 
this  sort,  when  done  by  the  party  which  finally 


38  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

succeeded,  that  is  the  reactionary  party,  passed 
over  in  comparative  silence  ;  and  everything  of 
the  kind  done  by  their  opponents  magnified  and 
dwelt  upon  so  as  to  distort  the  truth  of  history. 
I  suppose  there  may  be  twenty  people  who  have 
condemned  Napoleon  for  the  execution  of  the 
Due  d'Enghien,  where  there  is  one  that  has  con- 
demned Lord  Nelson  for  the  murder  of  Carac- 
cioli.  One  reason  of  this  certainly  is  that  Nel- 
son and  his  side  were  in  the  end  successful,  and 
Napoleon  and  his  side  were  not.  All  I  mean  to 
say  is  that  we  must  look  out  for  this  feature  in 
the  histories  of  this  period,  and  make  due  allow- 
ance for  it. 

Returning  now  to  our  story.  The  war  had 
broken  out  again  in  1799,  and  Russia  sent  her 
celebrated  general,  Souvorof,  into  Italy  to  heljj 
the  Austrians.  The  French  were  generally  un- 
successful. Macdonald  and  Joubert  were  badly 
defeated ;  even  Massena  was  forced  into  Switzer- 
land ;  and  it  looked  at  one  time  as  though  an  in- 
vasion of  France  was  a  not  impossible  event. 
But  Massena  proved  himself  more  than  a  match 
for  the  Russian  general,  and  in  a  series  of  severe 
actions  near  the  Lake  of  Zurich,  he  forced  Sou- 
vorof to  retreat  with  ofreat  loss. 

On  the  sea,  too,  the  French  had  been  most 
unfortunate.  Nelson  had  destroyed  the  French 
fleet  in  the  roads  of  Alexandria,  in  the  celebrated 
action   known  as    the   Battle  of   the  Nile,  and 


TOULON  AND  ITALY.  39 

thenceforward  the  French  army  in  EgyjDt  en- 
joyed only  the  most  precarious  means  of  commu- 
nication with  their  own  country. 

At  home  the  Directory  was  very  unpopular. 
Not  only  had  military  events  gone  against  public 
expectation  in  Italy,  but  elsewhere  there  was 
much  to  complain  of.  The  government  had  pro- 
voked a  causeless  quarrel  with  the  United  States  ; 
French  frigates  and  privateers  had  captured 
American  merchantmen ;  and  the  tone  assumed 
by  the  Directory  in  its  negotiations  with  the 
American  envoys  was  ill  calculated  to  avoid  an 
open  ruptm-e. 

But  the  great  cause  of  dissatisfaction  with  the 
existing  government  was  that  every  one  felt  it  to 
be  a  mere  transitory  phase  of  the  revolutionary 
movement,  and  that,  as  a  transitory  phase,  it  had 
lasted  about  long  enough.  It  was  not,  and  did 
not  pretend  to  be,  a  government  by  the  people. 
It  had  in  fact,  in  the  couj)  cVetat  of  the  18th  of 
Fructidor,  1797,  withstood  by  force  of  arms  the 
effect  of  the  popular  vote,  fearing  lest,  if  the 
people  were  to  be  allowed  freely  to  express  their 
will,  its  own  continuance  in  power  might  be  en- 
dangered, and  even  a  return  of  the  monarchy 
brought  about.  Hence  the  Directory  of  1799 
was  in  a  singular  position.  It  stood  for  the 
Revolution  as  against  the  Reaction,  undoubt- 
edly ;  but  it  also  did  not  hesitate  to  employ  ille- 
gal methods,  imprisonment,  banishment,  force, 
in    short,  to    maintain    its    position.     It   was   a 


40  THE   FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

creature  of  yesterday.  No  man  on  the  Board  of 
Directors  was  a  specially  eminent  man.  The 
world  has  put  up  with  a  good  deal  of  tyranny 
from  monarchs  whose  hereditary  right  to  reign 
is  claimed  on  the  strength  of  a  descent  from  a 
long  line  of  kings.  An  oligarchy  composed  of 
great  nobles,  actually  possessing  political  power, 
has  often,  as  in  Venice  for  instance,  ruled  for 
generations  with  the  consent  and  general  appro- 
val of  the  governed.  But  the  position  of  the 
five  men  who  constituted  the  French  Directory 
was  unlike  anything  of  this  nature.  It  was  due 
not  to  their  talents  or  services,  but  to  political 
intrigues.  Viewed  separately,  they  were  insignif- 
icant men.  As  an  oligarchy,  they  ruled  France 
in  her  internal  and  external  relations  with  a  des- 
potic hand.  Against  this  public  opinion  revolted. 
It  was  evident  that  another  crisis,  similar  in 
some  of  its  aspects  to  those  of  the  13th  of  Ven- 
demiaii-e,  1795,  and  the  18th  of  Fructidor,  1797, 
another  catastrophe  of  refrigeration  or  contrac- 
tion, —  to  recur  to  my  former  simile,  —  was  inevi- 
tably approaching.  The  present  state  of  things 
satisfied  no  man's  theoretical  views ;  it  did  not 
succeed  well  as  a  practical  scheme.  It  was  felt 
to  be  merely  one  step  in  the  progress  of  events 
which  had  begun  in  1789.  How  long  this  pro- 
visional state  of  things  would  last,  nobody  could 
tell ;  what  would  come  next,  nobody  could  fore- 
see. That  the  existing  system  had  no  hold  upon 
the   country,   that    it    satisfied    no    one,   that   it 


TOULON  AND  ITALY.  41 

must  inevitably  before  long  pass  away,  —  all  this 
was  plain. 

At  this  moment,  when  these  opinions  were 
most  strongly  felt,  Bonaparte,  on  the  6th  of 
October,  1799,  returned  from  Egypt. 


LECTURE  II. 

THE    CONSULATE. 

It  did  not  take  General  Bonaparte  long,  after 
his  arrival  in  Paris  in  1799,  to  comprehend  the 
political  situation.  The  weakness  of  the  Direc- 
tory was  evident  ;  its  unpopularity  manifest. 
And,  as  I  have  substantially  said  before,  it  was 
not  only  that  the  members  of  the  government 
were  personally  disliked.  It  was  clear,  by  a 
thousand  unmistakable  signs,  that  the  Directory 
as  a  form  of  government,  as  a  phase  of  the  revo- 
lutionary disease,  or,  if  you  please,  convales- 
cence, had  served  its  purpose,  and  would  soon 
be  replaced  by  something  else.  It  only  needed 
some  one  who  had  the  courage  to  push  his  shoul- 
der ao-ainst  the  wall ;  it  was  sure  to  tumble.  The 
Directory,  in  fine,  existed  on  sufferance. 

Nor  were  signs  wanting  to  Napoleon  of  his 
beinsc  the  man  to  whom  the  nation  looked  as  its 
leader,  as  the  man  whose  mission  it  was  to  termi- 
nate this  strife  of  revolutionary  factions,  to  unite 
all  Frenchmen,  both  at  home  and  abroad,  in  a 
cordial  support  of  the  new  flag,  to  become  the 
head  of  a  stable   and   settled   order   of    things, 


THE   CONSULATE,  43 

which  should  nevertheless  be  founded  on  the 
great  and  beneficial  reforms  brought  about  by 
the  Revolution. 

In  a  very  few  weeks  occurred  the  coujj  d^etat 
of  the  18th  of  Brumaire,  1799.  I  do  not  pro- 
pose to  take  up  your  time  with  a  narration  of 
what  took  place.  Suffice  it  to  say,  that  by  a 
skilful  show  of  force,  Bonaparte,  without  firing 
a  shot,  overturned  the  Directory,  dispersed  the 
legislature,  and  assumed  the  reins  of  govern- 
ment. But  I  do  want  you  to  remember  that  the 
government  which  he  overthrew  was  not  such  a 
republican  government  as  that  under  which  we 
are  living,  here  in  Massachusetts,  to-day.  It 
was  an  arbitrary  government ;  the  Directors  had 
themselves,  only  two  years  before,  as  we  have 
seen  in  the  last  lecture,  put  down  their  constitu- 
tional opponents  by  force  of  arms,  and  punished 
them  by  banishment  and  imprisonment.  The 
republic  of  1799  need  not  be  mourned. 

We  can  go  farther  than  this.  We  can  safely 
say  that  a  people,  the  masses  of  whom  are  in 
such  a  state  of  political  inexperience  and  inca- 
pacity as  were  the  French  people  in  1789,  do 
not  and  cannot  govern  themselves.  It  is  of  no 
consequence  what  assertions  as  to  their  natural 
right  to  do  so  may  be  made  on  their  behalf  by 
political  philosophers  or  by  honest  patriots. 
They  cannot  do  sO;,  because  it  is  work  to  which 
they  have  never  been  in  the  least  accustomed. 
Let  no  one  think  that  in  what  I  say  I  am  speak- 


44  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

ing  against  the  possibility  of  a  people  governing 
itself.  Not  at  all.  I  am  only  saying  that  no 
nation  in  the  state  in  which  France  was  in  1789 
could  possibly  be  expected  to  govern  itself. 
Such  a  nation  requires  an  education  in  the  art 
of  self-government.  The  people  have  not  the 
needed  knowledge  of  affairs,  or  the  moderation, 
or  the  sagacity  in  the  selection  of  their  rulers, 
nor  do  they  possess  the  inherited  political  tradi- 
tions which  exist  or  have  existed  amono-  all  the 
populations  that  do  or  ever  have  governed  them- 
selves. And  as  matter  of  fact,  France  never  had 
been  more  rigorously  governed  than  since  her 
entry  upon  the  revolutionary  epoch.  The  As- 
sembly, the  Terrorists,  the  Committee  of  Public 
Safety,  the  Directory,  governed  everything  by 
decree  from  Paris.  All  this  was  what  might  have 
been  expected.  It  was  not  only  perfectly  natu- 
ral, but  it  was  inevitable  that  it  should  be  so. 
No  laws,  no  changes  in  the  form  of  government, 
no  bestowals  of  power,  no  executions,  no  catas- 
trophes, no  victories,  no  declamations,  could  do 
for  France  more  than  what  had  been  done  for 
her.  And  what  was  that  ?  To  break  the  chains 
of  unjust  and  unequal  law  ;  to  raise  the  masses 
of  her  people  to  a  legal  equality  with  the  better 
classes ;  to  allow  her  the  opportunity  of  estab- 
lishing in  her  political  and  legal  system  the  great 
principles  of  justice,  equality,  and  humanity ; 
and  to  put  it  within  her  power  to  enter  on  a 
course  of  political  experience,  if  she  chose  so  to 


THE   CONSULATE.  45 

do,  which  would  result  in  the  course  of  time  in 
making  her  then  ignorant  and  bigoted  peasantry 
fit  to  exercise  the  franchise.  More  than  this,  no 
human  power  could  have  accompHshed.  This 
had  been  at  least  fau-ly  and  hopefully  begun, 
and  the  task  of  Napoleon  in  his  domestic  admin- 
istration was  to  carr}"  it  out  thoroughly  and 
wisely,  and  to  establish  it  on  a  permanent  and 
secme  basis.  This  work  of  the  Revolution  was 
in  1799  in  danger  of  bemg  swept  away  in  a  re- 
turning tide  of  royalist  reaction,  for  it  was  im- 
possible, now  that  the  revolutionary  fervor  had 
subsided,  that  property  and  all  the  other  conser- 
vative elements  in  society  should  not  reassert 
theh  customary  influence,  put  a  stop  to  the  suc- 
cession of  revolutions  and  C0U2)S  d'etat,  and  es- 
tablish m  their  stead  a  monarchy  of  some  kind. 
Let  the  Bourbons  return  in  1799,  and  the  good 
work  of  the  last  ten  years  would  be  undone  with 
a  veno-eance.  Yet  it  was  either  the  Bourbons 
or  Napoleon.  A  repubHc  existing  in  a  country 
where  you  cannot  trust  the  people,  where  you 
have  to  annul  the  elections  and  send  representa- 
tives to  penal  colonies,  unless  you  are  prepared 
to  see  the  halls  of  a  republican  legislature  filled 
with  the  partisans  of  monarchy,  —  and  that  was 
precisely  the  position  of  the  French  republic 
in  1799, — is  indeed  m  a  precarious  situation. 
I  should  rather  say,  however,  that  such  a  repub- 
lic is  not  a  republic  at  all ;  it  is  really  a  kind  of 
oHgarchy  ;  it  is  the  case  of  a  country  in  which 


46  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

monarchy  has  been  abolished,  and  in  which  great 
and  beneficial  reforms  have  been  introduced, 
being  despotically  ruled  by  a  few  obscure  poli- 
ticians, who,  not  owing  their  position  to  high 
birth  or  to  great  possessions,  or  to  anything 
which  appeals  to  the  imagination,  are  the  objects 
of  universal  jealousy  and  hostility.  They  cannot 
hold  their  position  ;  it  is  time  that  they  retire, 
and  allow  a  man  of  real  distinction  to  assume 
their  part.  No  one  is  the  worse  for  a  change  of 
this  kind.  The  country  in  fact  feels  reassured  in 
the  conviction  of  the  greater  security  of  its  newly 
gained  liberties. 

Napoleon,  then,  in  the  coiq^  d'etat  of  the 
18th  of  Brumaire,  1799,  did  not  destroy  the  lib- 
erties of  France  ;  I  hope  you  all  feel  clear  about 
this.  What  he  put  down  was  an  irresponsi- 
ble and  arbitrary  oligarchy ;  as  for  the  liberties 
of  France,  they  were  soon  to  receive  from  him 
their  grand  and  permanent  embodiment  in  the 
Code  Napoleon,  without  which,  it  is  safe  to  say, 
they  could  not  have  resisted  the  assaults  of  the 
Restoration.  Of  this  I  shall  speak  in  another 
lecture. 

Two  features  illustrated  the  new  coiqj  d'etat  : 
the  first,  that  it  was  followed  by  no  political  pro- 
scriptions ;  and  the  second,  that  it  was  hailed  by 
all  classes  with  joy  and  satisfaction.  A  revolu- 
tion never  was  accompHshed  more  happily  than 
this.  The  truth  is,  everybody  wanted  it.  Then, 
the  surprise,  and  grateful  surprise,  of  the  good 


THE   CONSULATE.  47 

people  of  France,  to  find  for  the  first  time  in  ten 
years  that  they  had  a  ruler  who  did  not  find  it 
necessary  to  kill,  banish,  or  imprison  his  political 
opponents,  must  have  been  a  delightful  feature 
in  the  new  situation.     All  the  accounts  concur 
in  representing  the  change  as  a  most  fortunate 
and  auspicious   one,  welcomed  by  the  conserva- 
tive classes  as  putting  an  end  to  the  Revolution, 
and  giving  sincere  satisfaction  to  the  masses,  as 
assumig  them  that  their  newly  acquired  rights 
would  now  be  entrusted  to  an  efBcient  defender. 
Bonaparte  was  the  head  of  the  new  regime 
under  the  title  of  First  Consul.     The  other  Con- 
suls, Cambaceres  and  Lebrun,  were  both  good 
men  of   affairs.     The  new  government  at  once 
went  to  work  to  reorganize  all  the  departments 
of  administration,  which  were  in  an  extremely 
neglected  condition.      Bonaparte    summoned  to 
his"  aid  the  best  talent,  and  the  most  honest  and 
faithful  pubHc  servants  he  could  find.      Royalist 
or  repubUcan,  returned  emigrant  or  regicide,  it 
was  all  the  same  to  the  new  chief,  who  recog- 
nized and  made  everybody  feel  that  France  had 
taken  a  new  departure,  and  that  "bygones  must 
be  bygones."      One   of    the  objects  which    the 
First  Consul  desired  most  ardently  was  to  termi- 
nate the  political  strifes  and  animosities  of  the 
Revolution.     He  saw  the    great    desirability  of 
uniting  all  parties  and  all  factions  in  France  m  a 
cordial  support  of  an  administration  which,  while 
it  recognized  and  proceeded  upon  accompUshed 


48  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

facts,  was  averse  to  radical  changes  in  either 
direction.  Besides,  he  desired  sincerely  the  re- 
turn to  France  of  the  emigres,  the  royalists  in 
exile,  who,  from  being  unable  to  accept  the 
ruthless  spoliation  of  the  revolutionary  epoch, 
or  from  a  well-grounded  fear  that  their  lives 
were  in  danger  if  they  remained  in  a  commu- 
nity so  given  over  as  France  was  in  the  days 
of  the  Terror  to  suspicion  and  violence,  had  left 
their  native  country,  to  which  they  were  now 
forbidden  under  severe  penalties  to  return.  To 
the  great  bulk  of  these  classes  he  extended  a 
complete  amnesty. 

Before,  however,  prosecuting  further  the  work 
of  internal  reorganization,  it  was  necessary  for 
the  First  Consul  to  turn  his  attention  to  the  for- 
eign relations  of  France.     Two  powers,  England 
and  Austria,  alone  kept  up  the  war ;  Russia  had 
retired  from   the  -field.      The   First  Consul  de- 
termined to  signalize  his  elevation  to  the  chief 
power  in  the  state  by  communicating  personally 
with  the  Emperor  and  the  King.    He  urged  upon 
them  the  miseries  of  war,  and  the  willingness  of 
France  to  make  peace.     The  Emperor  Francis 
returned  a  civil,  though  unsatisfactory  answer ; 
but  King  George  the  Third  repHed  through  his 
minister  for  foreign  affairs.  Lord  Grenville,  that 
the  best  evidence  France  could  give  of  the  sin- 
cerity of  her  pacific   intentions  would   be  to  re- 
call  the   Bourbons.     To  such  a  haughty  recep- 
tion  of  her  overtures  France   could,  of  course, 


THE   CONSULATE.  49 

make  but  one  answer,  —  to  prepare  vigorously 
for  war. 

There  was  nothing  to  be  done  against  Eng- 
land ;  the  French  fleet  was  too  weak  even  to  at- 
tempt to  rescue  the  army  in  Egypt.  The  Eng- 
lish sent  there  a  considerable  force  under  a 
gaUant  old  soldier,  Sir  Ralph  Abercromby.  Un- 
happily for  the  French,  Kleber,  who  was  really 
an  able  man,  had  faUen  by  the  hand  of  an 
assassin,  and  the  army  under  the  incompetent 
Menou  was  unable  to  make  head  against  the 
English.  A  convention  was  finally  concluded, 
and  the  veterans  of  Aboukir  and  Acre  returned 
to  France. 

The  war  with  Austria  presented  a  wholly  dif- 
ferent aspect.  Two  great  Austrian  armies  were 
threatening  the  French  frontier  :  one,  under 
Kj-ay,  on  the  Rhine ;  the  other  under  M^las,  in 
Italy.  The  theatres  of  the  operations  of  these 
armies  were  separated  by  Switzerland,  and  Swit- 
zerland was  occupied  by  French  troops.  Its 
possession,  therefore,  gave  to  France  a  very 
great  advantage  in  either  campaign,  for  it  was 
equally  possible,  by  operating  from  Schaffhau- 
sen,  to  throw  a  force  upon  Kray's  communica- 
tions with  Ulm,  and  by  crossing  the  Great  St. 
Bernard,  to  interpose  between  Melas  and  his  com- 
munications with  Austria.  Both  these  schemes 
Bonaparte  resolved  to  attempt. 

The  French  army  of  the  Rhine  was  com- 
manded by  Moreau,  an  officer  unquestionably  of 


50  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

great  merit,  though  not  possessing  genius.  He 
was  a  rather  cautious  man,  a  man  who  trusted 
very  little  to  the  inspiration  of  the  moment,  a 
man  of  sober  methodical  ways,  to  whom  the 
speculative  character  of  Napoleon's  mind  was  al- 
together foreign  and  distasteful.  Hence,  when 
Napoleon  proposed  to  him  to  throw  his  whole 
army  from  Schaffhausen  directly  in  rear  of  the 
Austrians,  urging  upon  him  the  splendid  and 
overwhelming  triumph  which  success  in  such  an 
operation  would  give  him,  Moreau's  mind  re- 
verted to  the  certain  difficulties  of  the  project, 
and  proposed  on  his  side  a  plan  by  which  the 
Austrian  general  should  be  induced,  by  demon- 
strations near  Strasburg  and  Neu  Brisach,  to 
weaken  his  force  opposite  Schaffhausen,  so  that, 
although  the  French  force  crossing  at  Schaffhau- 
sen would  be  diminished  by  the  detachments 
needed  to  make  these  demonstrations  on  the  lower 
Rhine,  it  was  certain  that  it  would  not  be  obliged 
to  meet  the  entire  Austrian  army.  After  many 
conferences,  Moreau  was  allowed,  as  he  certainly 
should  have  been,  to  have  his  own  way ;  and 
his  campaign,  for  we  may  as  well  finish  with  it 
here,  was  very  ably  conducted.  His  crossing 
was  successfully  made ;  he  drove  the  Austrians 
back  upon  Ulm  in  a  series  of  actions  in  which 
he  constantly  maintained  his  superiority ;  he 
then  forced  the  passage  of  the  Danube  below 
Ulm,  and  compelled  its  evacuation  ;  and,  finally, 
when   Marshal  Kray  had  been   foolishly  super- 


THE   CONSULATE.  51 

seded  by  the  Archduke  John,  he  routed  his  an- 
tagonist in  the  famous  battle  of  Hohenlinden, 
and  was  well  on  his  way  to  Vienna,  when  his 
victorious  course  was  arrested  by  the  signing  of 
the  preliminaries  of  peace.  Moreau  was,  in  fact, 
a  very  skilful  officer  ;  probably  his  abilities  have 
never  received  full  recognition  ;  his  unfortunate 
subsequent  course  brought  about  his  exile,  and 
he  was  finally  killed  in  battle,  at  Dresden,  fight- 
ing against  his  country.  But  this  campaign  of 
his  in  1800  seems  to  me  fully  to  justify  the  high 
encomiums  that  his  admirers  have  awarded  him. 
If  not  equal  in  brilliancy  and  striking  audacity 
to  that  of  Napoleon  in  1805,  we  should  remem- 
ber that  Moreau  was  in  a  subordinate  position^ 
while  the  Emperor  controlled  all  the  resources 
of  France  and  western  Germany.  Certain  it  is, 
that  Napoleon,  though  he  always  adhered  to  his 
criticism  on  Moreau's  plan  for  opening  the  cam- 
paign, nevertheless  always  spoke  of  its  conduct 
in  the  higfhest  terms. 

But  we  must  return  to  the  other  campaign 
proposed  by  the  First  Consul,  that  of  a  descent 
into  Italy  through  the  passes  of  the  Alps.  The 
Austrians,  you  will  recollect,  had  during  Bona- 
parte's absence  in  Egypt  recovered  Italy  ;  they 
were  now  besieging  Massena  in  Genoa,  and  pres- 
sing the  remnants  of  the  French  army  of  Italy 
into  the  Riviera.  Sardinia  had  allied  itself  with 
Austria,  or,  rather,  Austria  had  occupied  and 
absorbed  the  dominions  of  the  King  of  Sardinia. 


52  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

Of  course  it  was  possible  to  repeat  the  manoeu- 
vres of  1796,  to  break  from  the  Riviera  through 
the  Maritime  Alps,  and  to  emerge  on  the  plams 
of  Lombardy.  But  the  First  Consul  had  some- 
thin  o-  far  more  effective  and  attractive  than  this 
in  contemplation.  He  intended  taking  the  al- 
most unheard  of  step  of  crossing  the  Alps,  —  a 
step  which  he  knew  would  never  be  anticipated, 
—  and  then  to  place  himself  boldly  between 
Melas  and  his  base  of  operations. 

There  are  three  principal  passes  leading  from 
Switzerland  into  Italy.  The  westernmost  one, 
over  the  Mont  Cenis,  now  pierced  by  a  tun- 
nel, lies  almost  due  west  of  Turin ;  that  by 
the  Great  St.  Bernard  lies  northwest  of  Turin ; 
lastly,  there  is  that  by  Mont  St.  Gothard,  which 
brings  you  out  between  the  lakes  of  Como  and 
Maggiore,  almost  due  north  of  Milan.  This 
latter  pass  was  not  in  possession  of  France  at 
the  opening  of  the  campaign,  but  as  soon  as 
Moreau's  successes  opened  it  to  French  troops, 
a  strong  force  was  carried  through  it ;  but  this 
need  not  concern  us  at  this  moment. 

The  First  Consul  had  given  to  Moreau  the 
only  large  army  that  France  possessed.  For  his 
own  use  he  caused  a  corps  insignificant  in  num- 
bers to  be  collected  at  Dijon,  which  was  called 
the  Army  of  Reserve,  and  to  which  alone  the  at- 
tention of  the  Austrian  spies  was  directed.  To 
this  were  added  such  troops  as  could  be  collected 
from  depots   and   garrisons.      In  this  way  the 


THE   CONSULATE.  53 

entire  force  which  was  to  cross  the  Alps  over  the 
Great  St.  Bernard  was  made  up  to  about  35,000 
men.  It  was  not  a  well  organized  army,  in  fact 
it  can  scarcely  be  said  to  have  had  any  existence 
as  an  army  at  all,  until  it  began  to  march. 
Among  its  generals,  however,  were  counted 
Lannes,  Victor,  and  Desaix,  all  excellent  officers. 
By  a  demonstration  made  near  the  pass  of 
Mont  Cenis,  the  attention  of  the  enemy  was  at- 
tracted in  that  direction,  and  the  road  over  the 
Great  St.  Bernard  was  left  comparatively  un- 
guarded. Over  this  road,  often  difficult,  but 
still  passable  for  wagons  and  artillery,  the  First 
Consul  led  his  army  as  speedily  as  possible  until 
it  reached  the  plains  of  Lombardy  at  Ivrea,  a 
point  nearly  north  of  Turin.  Melas,  not  fearing 
an  attack  from  this  quarter,  had  scattered  his 
forces.  Part  of  his  troops  were  besieging  Mas- 
sena  in  Genoa ;  part  were  pushing  Suchet  to- 
wards Nice ;  part  were  near  Turin  watching  the 
Mont  Cenis  pass.  Napoleon  could  no  doubt 
have  marched  upon  Genoa,  for  the  relief  of  Mas- 
sena,  who  was  stoutly  holding  out  to  the  last. 
Apart  from  the  natural  policy  of  such  a  move- 
ment, there  would  certainly  have  been  a  good 
chance  of  defeating  the  scattered  forces  of  Melas, 
if  they  should  attempt  to  bar  his  progress.  But, 
once  at  Genoa,  the  whole  task  of  reducing  Lom- 
bardy would  still  remain  to  be  done.  He  would 
have  to  deal  with  an  enemy  superior  in  numbers, 
whose  communications  were  unembarrassed.     It 


54  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

would  have  been  1796  over  again.     It  was  not 
worth  while  to  cross  the  Alps  for  this. 

A  bolder  and  far  more  brilliant  plan  was  de- 
vised, one  of  those  plans  most  characteristic  of 
the  man ;  he  determined  to  possess  himself  first 
of  Milan,  the  moral  effect  of  which  could  not  but 
be  great ;  then  to  establish  himself  behind  the 
Ticino  and  the  Po,  and  shut  Melas  up  in  the 
plains  of  Lombardy  by  placing  the  French  army 
across  his  only  communications  with  Austria. 

Accordingly,  after  feigning  to  march  on  Tu- 
rin, he  directed  his  course  east  upon  Milan  and 
entered  it.  By  this  time  Moreau  had  begun  his 
movement  on  the  Rhine,  and  a  force  of  15,000 
or  20,000  men  was,  as  had  been  agreed  between 
them,  detached  from  Moreau's  army,  and  sent 
over  the  pass  of  St.  Gothard  to  Milan.  This  in- 
creased Bonaparte's  disposable  force  to  at  least 
50,000  men.  Leaving  garrisons  at  all  the  im- 
portant places,  he  commenced  his  march  south- 
ward and  westward,  crossing  the  Po,  and  mov- 
ing by  way  of  Montebello  towards  Alessandria, 
keeping  on  the  south  side  of  the  Po.  Uncer- 
tain of  the  whereabouts  of  the  enemy,  the  first 
news  came  in  the  form  of  a  severe  action  at 
Montebello,  where  Lannes  defeated  the  Austri- 
ans.  Pursuing  his  march  westward,  and  fear- 
ful lest  Melas  should  escape  him,  Bonaparte  de- 
tached Desaix  to  the  southward  to  get  further 
information.  Suddenly,  in  the  plain  of  Marengo, 
the  Austrians  were  encountered  in  force. 


,    N^nTHRUP  &   CO.,. 


^ 


=^ 


<<->' 


4      f 

*  JioVbio  '^         * 


■^ 


ITALIAN  CAMPAIGN  OF   1800. 

Situation  of  the  Armies  on  the  14th.  of  June, 
>»v.*>  ui^e  clay  of  the  Battle  of  Marengo, 


Austrians, 


^Prench  Headquarters     a         Austrian  Headquarters    ^ 


THE  CONSULATE.  65 

Melas,  who,  though  a  very  old  man,  was  still 
a  capable  and  vigorous  officer,  had  endeavored, 
since  he  heard  of  the  crossing  of  the  Alps  by 
the  French,  to  collect  his  scattered  forces.  But 
Ott,  who  was  besieging  Genoa,  insisted  on  wait- 
ing untU  Massena  should  be  obliged  to  surren- 
der, and  that  resolute  soldier  held  out  so  long 
that  Melas  could  not  effect  the  concentration  of 
his  army  in  time  to  make  for  the  Po,  and  gain 
his  lines  of  communication.  To  do  so  would,  of 
course,  have  been  to  give  up  everything  but  the 
fortified  towns,  but  still  he  could  reasonably 
have  expected  reinforcements  when  once  within 
reach  of  them,  while,  if  Napoleon  should  be  mas- 
ter of  his  communications,  there  was  nothing 
for  it  but  a  desperate  fight,  in  which,  if  beaten, 
he  would  be  at  the  mercy  of  his  conqueror. 
And  so  in  fact  it  proved.  Partly  by  the  obsti- 
nacy of  Ott  in  delaying  to  obtain  the  surrender 
of  Genoa,  partly  by  the  celerity  of  Napoleon, 
very  hkely  owing  to  the  customary  Austrian 
slowness  of  movement,  Melas  found  that  Napo- 
leon had  seized  his  communications  and  was  now 
advancing  upon  him,  flushed  with  the  success 
which  had  hitherto  attended  his  marvellous 
plan,  bringing  with  him  all  the  prestige  of  su- 
perior skill,  and  confidently  counting  upon  vic- 
tory. 

But  the  brave  old  man  was  not  a  whit 
daunted.  He  boldly  came  out  of  the  fortified 
city  of  Alessandria,   crossed  the  Bormida,  and 


56  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

advanced  resolutely  upon  the  French.  The 
chances  were  not  in  Bonaparte's  favor.  His 
available  force  was  not  large,  for  he  had  been 
obliged  to  leave  many  of  his  troops  at  Milan, 
and  also  on  the  Ticino  and  the  Po,  to  protect 
his  communications.  Then  he  had  just  sent 
Desaix  off  to  find  where  the  enemy  were.  What 
happened  at  the  famous  battle  of  Marengo  we 
probably  shall  never  exactly  know.  Certain  it 
is  that  during  nearly  the  entire  day  the  French 
were  driven  back,  and  in  some  cases  with  disor- 
der. It  is  pretty  clear  that  the  troops  fought 
badly.  The  army,  as  I  have  before  said,  was 
not  a  well  organized  army.  Nevertheless  it  had 
good  ofiicers.  Lannes  and  Victor  strove  to  ar- 
rest the  disorder.  Bonaparte  himself  did  every- 
thing that  could  be  done,  and  hoped  against 
hope.  Finally,  towards  the  end  of  the  day,  De- 
saix came  up.  Bonaparte's  spirits  rose.  With 
new  vigor  he  reanimated  the  drooping  energy 
of  the  soldiers.  Desaix's  division  made  a  for- 
midable charge,  in  which  that  gallant  officer 
fell.  Kellerman's  regiment  of  horse  was  equal 
to  the  emergency,  and  broke  to  pieces  an  Aus- 
trian column.  Poor  old  Melas,  thinking  the 
victory  won,  and  fatigued  with  this  long  and 
arduous  struggle,  had  gone  back  to  Alessandria. 
The  tide  of  battle  turned.  The  French  with 
the  elasticity  of  their  national  temperament  as- 
sumed the  offensive,  and  drove  their  antagonists 
everywhere  before  them,  capturing  twenty  can- 


THE   CONSULATE.  67 

non  and  six  thousand  prisoners.  By  a  conven- 
tion executed  a  few  days  later,  the  Austrian 
army  was  allowed  to  retire  behind  the  Mincio, 
but  Lombardy  was  evacuated,  and  all  the  for- 
tified places  were  surrendered. 

The  moral  effect  of  the  battle  of  Mareno^o 
was  immense.  It  completely  dazzled  the  world. 
The  dramatic  character  of  the  whole  campaign, 
so  well  calculated  to  bewilder  and  astonish ; 
the  marvellous  crossing  of  the  Alps  ;  the  unop- 
posed march  to  Milan  and  the  welcome  which 
that  city  gave  to  the  liberating  army,  —  for  such 
was  the  hght  in  which  the  French  army  was 
viewed  ;  the  closing  of  the  avenues  of  escape  ; 
finally,  the  deadly  struggle,  with  its  varying 
chances,  and  the  crushing  victory,  —  all  these 
features  make  the  campaign  of  Marengo  one  of 
the  most  characteristic  of  Napoleon's  campaigns. 
As  such,  we  will  now  pause  a  moment  and  con- 
sider its  leading  features. 

I  think  the  thing  that  most  impresses  us  in 
this  campaign  is  its  completeness  of  design.  Na- 
poleon aimed  at  compassing  all  the  objects  of 
the  campaign  in  a  consecutive  series  of  move- 
ments which  must  terminate  in  a  single  battle. 
To  gain  the  plains  of  Lombardy  without  a  strug- 
gle ;  to  reestablish  his  former  ascendency  at  the 
capital,  Milan  ;  then  to  possess  himself  of  the 
crossings  of  the  great  rivers,  so  as  to  shut  off 
every  avenue  of  escape ;  lastly,  to  turn  and  seek 


58  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

his  enemy,  and  to  engage  liim  in  the  decisive 
conflict,  —  this  was  the  task  he  proposed  to  him- 
self. It  assuredly  was  the  ideal  thing  to  do,  if 
it  could  he  done.  It  would,  if  successful,  ac- 
complish more,  and  with  less  loss  of  life,  too, 
than  any  other  plan  that  could  be  devised.  As 
an  intellectual  feat  it  awakens  our  admiration. 

But  it  was  equally  remarkable  for  its  audacity. 
The  French  army  was  inferior  in  numbers  to  its 
opponent.  Yet  the  needs  of  this  plan  required 
large  detachments,  to  occupy  Milan,  guard  the 
crossings  of  the  Po,  and  so  forth.  When  the 
day  of  battle  came,  Bonaparte  was  outnumbered, 
and  it  was  by  great  good  fortune,  as  well  as  by 
hard  fighting,  that  he  gained  the  victory.  It 
would  not  be  difficult  to  point  out  certain  not 
improbable  combinations  and  movements  on  the 
part  of  the  Austrians  which  would  not  only  have 
rendered  his  plan  abortive,  but  have  forced  him 
to  retreat  over  the  pass  of  St.  Gothard,  where 
the  roads  were  by  no  means  so  favorable  for  ar- 
tillery. Yet  of  all  this  he  took  his  risk.  Partly, 
no  doubt,  because  the  scientific  completeness  of 
the  plan  approved  it  to  his  intellect  and  fasci- 
nated his  imagination,  partly  because  he  esti- 
mated correctly  the  want  of  activity  of  his  ene- 
mies, but  largely  because  he  was  a  born  gambler 
in  war,  because  he  enjoyed  taking  a  great  risk, 
fighting  a  battle  in  which  everything  was  at 
stake,  he  adopted  this  novel,  hazardous,  but  con- 
clusive plan. 


THE   CONSULATE.  59 

And  here  we  touch  upon  one  of  the  chief  de- 
fects in  Napoleon's  character.  It  is  evident  that 
he  had  other  ends  in  view  in  war  than  the  prac- 
tical result  to  be  reached.  He  wanted  to  carry 
it  on  so  as  to  satisfy  his  sense  of  the  fitness  of 
things,  so  to  speak,  to  establish  and  maintain 
his  reputation  as  a  master  of  the  art,  or,  at  any 
rate,  to  make  his  campaigns  illustrate  the  grand 
principles  of  strategy.  For  these  ends,  which 
are  perfectly  legitimate  when  subordinated  to 
the  great  objects  for  which  war  is  waged,  he 
undoubtedly,  in  this  campaign  of  Marengo,  as 
afterwards  in  other  campaigns,  sacrificed  a  cer- 
tain amount  of  safety,  or,  if  you  please,  incurred 
a  certain  and  otherwise  unnecessary  amount  of 
hazard.  For  this  he  should,  without  question, 
be  blamed ;  no  ideal  completeness,  no  possi- 
bility of  overwhelming  success,  however  desira- 
ble, should  ever  be  allowed  to  obscure  the  clear 
perception  of  the  ultimate  practical  ends  to  be 
obtained  in  war,  or  to  render  a  jot  more  difficult 
or  hazardous  the  already  hazardous  and  difficult 
task  of  a  campaign.  They  are  not  worth  the 
sacrifices  which  they  may  cost.  Moreau,  as  we 
have  seen,  rejected  the  plan  which  Napoleon 
proposed  to  him,  of  throwing  his  entire  army 
across  the  Rhine  at  SchafPhausen,  thereby  cut- 
ting Kray's  communications,  and  necessitating 
a  great  battle,  in  which  success,  if  he  gained  it, 
would  be  decisive.  Moreau  preferred,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  safer  coui-se  of  manoeuvring  in 


60  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

such  a  way  as  to  render  it  extremely  unlikely 
that  such  a  decisive  action  could  be  had  at  the 
outset  of  the  campaign,  but  also  so  as  to  give 
to  him  an  excellent  chance  of  driving  his  ad- 
versary from  point  to  point,  and  thereby  in  time 
attaining  the  object  of  the  war.  Moreau's 
method  was  doubtless  the  more  costly  in  life  and 
in  time,  but  it  was  also  unquestionably  safer. 
Manoeuvring  as  Moreau  did,  he  was  at  no  time 
exposed  to  extreme  peril ;  and  although  the  same 
observation  holds  true  of  his  adversary,  yet  it 
may  fairly  be  said  that,  unless  in  the  presence 
of  a  most  pressing  emergency,  no  general  ought 
ever  to  expose  his  command  to  extreme  peril. 

Still,  while  we  may  justly  criticise  the  tactics 
of  Napoleon  in  this  respect,  while  we  may,  I 
think,  fairly  enough  regard  him  as  too  intent  on 
the  game  of  war,  considered  simply  as  a  game, 
and  not  mindful  enough  of  the  practical  ends 
for  which  alone  it  is  ever  justifiable  to  go  to 
war,  we  shall  not  do  wisely  or  justly  if  we  adopt 
the  extremely  harsh  tone  of  such  a  critic  as 
Lanfrey.  After  all,  there  is  something  fine  in 
this  desire  of  Napoleon's  to  do  this  work  of  war 
with  ideal  completeness ;  to  let  the  consider- 
ation of  the  ultimate  results  stand  aside  for  the 
moment,  and  to  play  the  game  as  it  ought  to  be 
played.  And  it  must  be  remembered  that  war 
is  a  game  of  hazard,  at  its  best,  and  that  no  man 
can  be  a  really  good  general  who  does  not  un- 
derstand the  enjoyment  of  risking  a  battle.     AH 


THE   CONSULATE.  61 

men  of  affairs  understand  this  species  of  enjoy- 
ment ;  whether  it  be  the  surgeon,  who  trusts  to 
the  success  of  his  newly  invented  operation ; 
or  the  merchant,  who  risks  his  fortune  on  his 
calculations  ;  or  the  master  mariner,  who  trusts 
to  the  correctness  of  his  dead  reckoning  when  he 
is  nearing  dangerous  ground.  All  men  accus- 
tomed to  the  management  of  affairs  on  any  large 
scale  will  comprehend  the  trait  of  character  of 
which  I  have  been  speaking.  In  Napoleon,  who 
was  preeminently  a  man  of  affairs,  it  was  un- 
doubtedly exaggerated  ;  and,  holding  the  posi- 
tion he  did,  the  undue  prominence  of  this  fea- 
ture caused  many  and  widespread  evils.  But 
when  you  come  to  sift  it  down,  so  to  speak,  you 
will  find  you  are  not  dealing  with  a  vicious  pro- 
pensity, calling  for  moral  indignation.  You 
may,  if  you  like,  have  that  sort  of  indignation 
which  every  one  feels  when  a  business  man  risks 
his  fortune  in  speculation,  when  an  inventor 
gives  up  his  regular  business  and  embarks  his 
property  in  doubtful  experiments.  But  even 
here,  you  will  observe,  you  may  consistently 
admit  these  rash  people  to  be  very  worthy  men 
in  themselves.  And  you  will  notice  another 
thing,  if  you  think  of  it,  that  your  indignation 
increases  with  the  amount  of  egregious  folly  you 
perceive  in  the  unhappy  speculator  or  inventor, 
while  it  diminishes  or  even  disappears  if  the 
foresight  of  the  one  or  the  originality  of  the 
other  is  evident  beyond  a  cavil.      Therefore   I 


62  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

submit  that  we  shall  not  he  doing  well  if  we 
join  in  the  reproaches  which  Laufrey  so  forcibly 
hurls  at  the  First  Consul  for  the  hazards  to 
which  he  subjected  France  and  her  army  in  this 
campaign  of  Marengo.  Lanfrey  was  nothing 
but  a  critic,  and  probably  never  experienced  the 
joy  of  the  practical  man  in  attempting  some- 
thing difficult  and  hazardous,  and  succeeding  in 
it.  Most  men  Avith  vigorous  minds  and  mascu- 
line temperaments  will  feel,  I  think,  that  they 
can,  in  a  measure  at  least,  understand  Napo- 
leon's mind  about  this  his  famous  campaign  of 
Marengo. 

Let  us  now  return  from  this  dio-ression. 

I  shall  not  follow  the  details  of  the  war  fur- 
ther. Suffice  it  to  say  that  peace  with  Austria 
was  concluded  at  Luneville  in  February,  1801, 
and  with  England  in  March,  1802.  Our  atten- 
tion must  now  be  given  to  the  policy  of  the  First 
Consul  at  home. 

While  the  great  mass  of  the  nation  felt  an  un- 
mistakable sense  of  relief  from  the  doubts  and 
alarms  from  wdiich  they  had  so  constantly  suf- 
fered during  the  preceding  ten  years,  there  were 
two  factions  who  were  bitterly  opposed  to  the 
assumption  of  the  supreme  power  by  Napoleon. 
These  were,  first,  the  jacobins,  and  secondly,  the 
royalists. 

The  jacobins  clung  to  the  form  and  the  name 
of  the  republic.  They  thought  they  saw  the 
beginnings  of  the  Empire  in  the  Consulate,  and 


THE   CONSULATE.  63 

they  were  right.  Precisely  what  they  expected 
from  France,  they  very  Hkely  could  not  have 
told  themselves.  It  was  evident  enough  that 
the  republicans  were  in  a  clear  minority ;  and 
where  was  the  republic  if  the  majority  of  the 
people  were  not  republicans  ?  But  however 
illogical  may  have  been  the  position  of  the  jac- 
obins, they  still  clung  desperately  to  it.  They 
shut  their  eyes  to  the  facts.  They  refused  to 
admit  that  the  French  peasantry  cared  for  the 
republic  only  because  it  guaranteed  to  them 
their  newly  won  liberty  and  equality,  not  be- 
cause it  gave  them  the  power  of  casting  ballots. 
For  this  last  the  people  cared  very  little,  and,  if 
they  reflected  on  the  subject  at  all,  they  must 
have  observed  that  the  most  distinguished  apos- 
tles of  the  natural  riffht  of  all  men  to  share 
equally  in  the  government  of  the  state  had  been 
the  fiercest  and  most  tyrannical  of  rulers,  when 
it  looked  as  if  the  people  desired  a  different 
kind  of  government  from  that  which  had  been 
designed  for  them  by  their  liberal  leaders.  But 
in  truth,  the  masses  cared  very  little  for  all  this 
sort  of  thinof.  It  had  never  amounted  to  much 
in  their  experience  ;  what  rights  they  had  ever 
possessed  had  been  possessed  in  theory  only; 
some  Danton,  or  Robespierre,  or  deputy  of  the 
convention,  or  republican  general,  had  from  time 
to  time  arranged  and  settled  matters  for  them 
with  a  high  hand  ;  what  had  been  gained  in  the 
shape  of  exemption  from  peculiar  and  oppressive 


64  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

burdens,  and  in  the  extension  of  equal  rights, 
and  in  the  levelling  of  all  distinctions  before  the 
law,  they  recognized  as  the  fruits  of  the  Revolu- 
tion, and  for  these,  and  only  for  these  they  really 
cared.  The  attitude  of  the  irreconcilable  jaco- 
bins, therefore,  awakened  no  popular  response. 

The  royalists  had  the  advantage,  such  as  it 
was,  of  knowing  precisely  what  they  wanted. 
They  had,  moreover,  in  the  district  known  as  La 
Vendee,  an  inexhaustible  reservoir  of  devoted 
adherents  of  the  king.  Chouans,  Vendeans, 
Bretons,  were  generally,  and  often  fanatically, 
favorable  to  the  exiled  family.  Then  the  sym- 
pathy of  all  foreign  governments  was  with  them. 
Louis  the  Eighteenth  resided  at  Warsaw.  His 
brother,  the  Comte  d'Artois,  afterwards  Charles 
the  Tenth,  lived  in  or  near  London.  The  Eng- 
lish government  subsidized  these  unfortunate 
princes,  and  treated  them  as  handsomely  as  if 
there  had  never  been  a  quarrel  between  the 
House  of  Brunswick  and  the  House  of  Bourbon 
touching  the  expulsion  of  the  Stuarts,  or  the  loss 
of  the  thirteen  colonies.  In  the  mind  of  the 
English  government  of  that  day  the  House  of 
Bourbon  stood  for  law  and  order,  for  legitimate 
authority  against  usurpation,  for  paternal  gov- 
ernment by  the  natural  and  God-given  ruler,  as 
against  the  tyranny  of  a  soldier  risen  from  the 
masses. 

The  royalist  party  in  France  greatly  exagger- 
ated the  disaffection  existing  against  the  Direc- 


THE   CONSULATE.  65 

tory.  They  took  it  to  mean  a  willingness  to 
restore  the  Bourbons.  But  in  putting  this  inter- 
pretation upon  it  they  were  going  a  great  deal 
too  far.  The  irritation  against  the  Directory 
had  its  causes,  which  every  one  could  see.  But 
those  who  murmured  against  the  Triumvirs  were 
not  necessarily  favorers  of  the  old  regmie.  Any 
really  strong  and  respectable  government  would 
suit  them.  And  such  a  government  it  was  evi- 
dent they  had  in  the  Consulate. 

Filled,  however,  by  the  notion  that  nothing 
but  the  strong  arm  of  Bonaparte  prevented  the 
nation  from  returning:  en  7nasse  to  the  ancient 
dynasty,  some  unscrupulous  wretches  of  the  roy- 
alist faction  hatched  the  plot  which,  in  Decem- 
ber, 1800,  nearly  destroyed  the  life  of  the  Fhst 
Consul  by  the  explosion  of  what  was  termed  an 
infernal  machine.  At  the  time,  it  was  supposed, 
especially  by  Bonaparte  himself,  that  the  authors 
of  this  outrage  were  jacobins,  and  he  caused  a 
number  of  the  most  pronounced  of  them,  some 
of  whom  had  been  connected  with  the  excesses 
of  the  Terror,  to  be  banished.  But  it  was  after- 
wards ascertained  that  the  plot  was  a  royalist 
plot. 

From  time  to  time  during  the  succeeding  three 
years  there  were  rumors  of  conspiracies,  but  as 
nothing  of  importance  occurred,  it  was  not  un- 
naturally thought  that  these  rumors  might  have 
their  source  in  the  superserviceable  brains  of  an 
over-zealous  police.     In  fact,  it  was  not  until  the 


66  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

peace  of  Amiens  was  broken  in  March,  1803, 
that  the  formidable  conspiracy  of  Georges  Ca- 
doudal  was  hatched  in  Ensfland. 

Georges  Cadoudal,  or  Georges,  as  he  is  gener- 
ally called,  was  a  Chouan  of  respectable  origin, 
a  staunch  royalist,  of  unquestionable  fidelity  to 
the  exiled  house,  and  of  inextinguishable  hostil- 
ity to  the  present  government  of  France.  He 
was  a  fanatic  of  the  first  rank ;  not  a  Guiteau, 
yet  not  unlike  John  Brown;  a  man  for  whom 
personally  you  could  not  but  feel  a  certain  meas- 
ure of  admiration,  inasmuch  as  without  any  dis- 
cernible admixture  of  selfish  motives,  and  obvi- 
ously impelled  by  religious  and  loyal  enthusiasm, 
he  undertook  the  perilous  task  of  restoring  the 
monarchy  by  killing  the  First  Consul.  Moreover, 
Georges  had  his  own  method  of  committing  his 
intended  murder.  While  he  confessed  having: 
been  privy  to  the  plot  of  three  years  before, 
though  not,  as  he  maintained,  to  its  details,  this 
time,  at  any  rate,  he  would  have  nothing  to  do 
with  infernal  machines.  What  he  hoped  to  ac- 
complish was,  at  the  head  of  some  of  his  own 
men,  Chouans  and  fanatics  like  himself,  to  set 
upon  the  First  Consul  in  the  streets  of  Paris,  and 
kill  him  in  broad  daylight,  overcoming  by  main 
force  the  resistance  of  any  guard  that  might  be 
attending  him. 

While,  however,  this  precious  scheme  might, 
and  very  possibly  did,  impose  on  the  rude  mind 
of  this  ruf&an  as  being  in  its  nature  essentially 


THE   CONSULATE.  67 

different  from  any  ordinary  mode  of  assassina- 
tion, it  is  plain  enough  to  common-sense  people 
that  no  such  difference  existed.  What  Georo-es 
undertook  to  accomplish  was  nothing  else  than 
the  murder  of  the  First  Consul.  His  mode  of 
doing  it  was  his  own  choice ;  it  may  possibly 
have  been  confounded  in  his  mind  with  lawfid 
warfare ;  but  no  one  not  a  fanatic  in  the  cause 
of  the  Bourbons,  and  no  one  who  did  not  desire 
to  be  deceived,  could  possibly  be  taken  in  by 
such  a  monstrous  pretence.  '^ 

Georges'  scheme  could  not  avail  itself  of  the 
excuses  which  are  so  often  made  for  political 
assassinations  and  atrocities.  He  was  no^.  en- 
thusiast in  the  cause  of  antislavery,  like  John 
Brown  ;  he  was  no  opponent  of  despotism,  like 
the  Russian  Nihilist.  He  was  a  fanatical  devo- 
tee of  the  divine  right  of  kings,  and  he  meant  to 
kill  this  upstart,  whose  existence,  as  he  doubtless 
believed,  was  the  principal  obstacle  to  the  return 
of  the  Bourbons. 

It  needs  hardly  to  be  said  that  such  an  enter- 
prise as  this  was  one  with  which  no  honorable 
man  ought  to  have  had  anything  whatever  to 
do.  Nor  could  any  foreign  government,  which 
respected  itself,  and  paid  any  regard  to  the  most, 
ordinary  obligations  of  civilized  nations,  touch 
such  a  project  without  sharing  in  the  infamy 
of  murder.  Yet  nothing  is  more  certain  than 
that  the  Comte  d'Artois,  afterwards  Charles  the 
Tenth,   was   privy  to   the    plot    and    personally 


68  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

conferred  with  the  conspirators.  And  what  is 
strang-er  yet,  and  far  worse,  is  that  the  British 
government  supplied  these  assassins  with  money, 
and  sent  them  over  to  France  in  an  EngHsh  ves- 
sel of  war,  commanded  by  Captain  Wright  of 
the  Royal  Navy.  A  more  flagrant  and  outrage- 
ous violation  of  the  law  of  nations,  it  is  safe  to 
say,  never  took  place.  The  discovery,  that  the 
Bourbon  princes  were  arranging  in  London  the 
details  of  a  conspiracy  to  effect  their  own  resto- 
ration by  the  murder  of  the  First  Consul,  and 
that  the  assassins  were  sent  over  to  France  in 
English  vessels  of  war,  furnished  with  money  by 
the  English  government,  showed  Napoleon  that 
he  was,  by  the  Bourbons  and  the  British  gov- 
ernment at  least,  regarded  as  an  outlaw,  that 
no  steps  were  considered  too  atrocious  to  get 
rid  of  him,  that  the  usages  and  customs  which 
obtain  among  civilized  nations,  even  in  time  of 
war,  were  not  regarded  as  applicable  to  him. 

These  facts  were  ascertained  when  Georges, 
Riviere,  Polignac,  Lajolais,  and  others  were  ar- 
rested in  the  winter  of  1803  arid  1804.  And 
so  far  as  I  know  there  is  no  dispute  about, 
them.  One  of  the  most  curious  things  about 
this  conspiracy  is  the  evidently  unconscious  in- 
difference of  English  historians  to  the  infamy  of 
the  part  which  their  government  played  in  this 
affair.  It  is  explicable  only  when  we  recollect, 
or  rather  endeavor  to  imagine,  the  enormous 
force  of  the  legitimist  prejudice  of  that  day, — • 


THE    CONSULATE.  69 

a  prejudice  into  which  we  Americans  can  hardly, 
even  by  a  violent  effort  of  imagination,  bring 
ourselves  to  enter ;  a  prejudice  which  makes 
even  such  a  good  man  as  Sir  Walter  Scott 
quite  insensible  to  the  enormity  of  the  conduct 
of  the  Bourbon  princes  and  the  British  govern- 
ment in  furthering  the  assassination  of  Bona- 
parte, while  his  sense  of  justice  and  humanity  is 
stirred  to  its  depths  by  the  prompt  and  terrible 
counterstroke  of  Napoleon  in  the  seizure  and  ex- 
ecution of  the  Due  d'Enghien.  But  so  it  is. 
Scott  is  utterly  indifferent  to  the  first  of  these 
acts,  for  which  no  plea  can  be  offered ;  he  ex- 
hausts the  vials  of  his  indignation  in  dealing 
with  the  other,  which  had  confessedly,  apart  from 
anything  else,  the  excuse  of  just  provocation 
at  an  infamous  conspiracy,  and  of  reasonable 
grounds  for  suspicion  of  the  guilt  of  the  duke. 

That  you  may  not  think  I  am  exaggerating,  I 
am  going  to  let  Scott  speak  for  himself.  I  quote 
from  chapter  xlvi. :  — 

"  Meantime,  the  peace  of  Amiens  being  broken,  the 
British  government,  with  natural  policy,  resolved  once 
more  to  avail  themselves  of  the  state  of  public  feeling 
in  France,  and  engage  the  partisans  of  royalty  in  a 
fresh  attack  upon  the  consular  government.  ...  A 
scheme  was  in  agitation  for  raising  the  royalists  in 
the  west,  where  the  Duke  de  Berri  was  to  make  a 
descent  on  the  coast  of  Picardy,  to  favour  the  insur- 
rection. The  Duke  d'Enghien,  grandson  of  the  Prince 
of  Conde,  fixed  his  residence,  under  the  protection  of 
the  Margrave  of  Baden,  at  the  chateau  of  Ettenheim, 


70  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

with  the  purpose,  doubtless,  of  being  ready  to  put  him- 
self at  the  head  of  the  royalists  in  the  east  of  France, 
or,  if  occasion  should  offer,  in  Paris  itself.  .  .  ,  Whilst 
the  French  princes  expected  on  the  frontier  the  effect 
of  commotions  in  the  interior  of  France,  Piche^ru, 
Georges  Cadoudal,  and  about  thirty  other  royalists  of 
the  most  determined  character,  were  secretly  landed 
in  France,  made  their  way  to  the  metropolis,  and  con- 
trived to  find  lurking-places  invisible  to  the  all-seeing 
police.  There  can  be  no  reason  to  doubt  that  a  part 
of  those  agents,  and  Georges  in  particular,  saw  the 
greatest  obstacle  of  their  enterprise  in  the  existence 
of  Bonaparte,  and  were  resolved  to  commence  by  his 
assassination.  Pichegru,  who  was  constantly  in  com- 
pany with  Georges,  cannot  well  be  supposed  ignorant 
of  this  purpose,  though  better  befitting  the  fierce  chief 
of  a  band  of  Chouans  than  the  conqueror  of  Hol- 
land." 

Thus  Scott.  He  was,  you  know,  a  contem- 
porary of  these  events.  I  think  you  will  agree 
with  me  that  this  utter  insensibility  of  his  to  the 
enormity  of  the  conduct  both  of  the  Bourbon 
princes  and  the  British  government  is  one  of  the 
most  significant  marks  of  the  times.  It  shows 
the  strength  of  the  aristocratic  feeling.  Not 
thus  would  Scott  have  spoken  if  Bonaparte  had 
landed  English  rebels  bent  upon  the  assassination 
of  Kin  Of  Georg-e. 

The  discovery  of  this  plot  plunged  France, 
and  Paris  especially,  in  a  state  of  excitement  that 
had  not  been  known  since  the  days  of  the  Ter- 
ror.    The  people,  who  had  w^elcomed  Bonaparte 


THE    CONSULATE.  71 

as  their  saviour  from  revolution  and  reaction, 
who  had  recognized  in  him  the  wdse  legislator, 
the  restorer  of  the  church,  the  healer  of  the  rev- 
olutionary annnosities,  were  equally  amazed  and 
enraged  at  this  wanton,  this  outrageous  attack 
upon  him,  hatched  abroad  in  the  interest  of 
the  Bourbon  princes,  and  supported  by  the  Brit- 
ish government.  Meantime  the  administration 
looked  in  every  direction  for  the  ramifications 
of  the  plot.  The  intrigues  of  Mr.  Drake,  the 
British  resident  at  Munich  in  Bavaria,  and  of 
Mr.  Spencer  Smith,  the  British  envoy  at  Stutt- 
gard  in  Wiirtemberg,  with  the  royalists  in 
France,  had  lately  come  to  light  and  were  mak- 
ing a  great  deal  of  noise.  French  officers  Avere 
sent  to  these  countries  to  examine  the  state  of 
affairs.  They  reported  among  other  things  that 
the  Due  d'Enghien,  the  grandson  of  the  Prince 
of  Conde,  was  living  at  Ettenheim  in  Baden,  a 
few  miles  only  from  the  Rhine,  surrounded  with 
a  little  court  of  French  emigres,  that  he  was  in 
correspondence  with  the  disaffected  in  France, 
and  that  his  frequent  and  protracted  absences 
from  home  gave  good  grounds  for  the  suspicion 
that  he  occasionally  crossed  the  border  on  politi- 
cal errands.  No  sooner  did  these  reports  reach 
the  First  Consul  than  he  sent  two  officers,  each 
heading  a  small  detachment,  into  Baden,  one  to 
seize  the  duke  and  his  retinue,  the  other  to  carry 
to  the  Margrave  the  apology  of  the  French 
government  for  taking  such  a  step.     The  Due 


72  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

d'Eno-liien  with  all  his  suite,  was  seized  on  the 
night  of  Thursday  the  15th  of  March,  1804,  and 
carried  immediately  to  Strasburg.  Here  he  was 
kept  a  couple  of  days ;  on  Sunday  morning  he 
was  brought  alone  to  Paris,  and  carried  to  the 
castle  of  Vincennes,  near  Paris,  where  he  arrived 
on  the  afternoon  of  Tuesday,  March  20,  1804. 
The  same  night  he  was  brought  before  a  court- 
martial,  accused  first,  of  having  borne  arms 
against  France,  secondly,  of  having  been  and 
now  being  in  the  pay  of  England,  and  thirdly, 
of  being  a  party  to  the  conspiracy  against  the 
republic  ;  was  convicted  on  the  first  two  charges 
on  his  own  admissions,  and  on  the  third  also, 
though  on  what  evidence  does  not  clearly  ap- 
pear ;  was  sentenced  to  death ;  was  shot  at  six 
o'clock  on  the  morning  of  the  21st,  in  the  ditch 
surrounding  the  castle ;  and  was  buried  where 
he  fell. 

This  summary  proceeding  has  always  excited 
the  severest  criticism.  Much  of  this  is  evidently 
based  on  the  respect  felt  for  the  high  rank  of  the 
unfortunate  nobleman.  We  see  plenty  of  this 
feeling  in  the  pages  of  Scott,  and  in  the  me- 
moirs of  Madame  de  Remusat,  whose  sympathies 
were  all  with  the  old  regime.  But  the  First 
Consul  has  been  severely  blamed  by  other  histo- 
rians, with  whom  this  sentimental  consideration 
has  little  or  no  weight.  Bonaparte  is  accused  of 
having  executed  an  innocent  man  merely  in 
order  to  strike  terror  into  the  ranks  of  his  ene- 


THE   CONSULATE.  73 

mies.     He  is  practically  accused  of  having  com- 
mitted a  counter-assassination.     Let  us  see. 

If  the  Prince  really  was,  as  Sir  Walter  Scott 
thinks  he  was,  staying  on  the  border  "  with  the 
purpose,"  as  Scott  declares,  "  of  being  ready  to 
put  himself  at  the  head  of  the  royalists  in  the 
east  of  France,  or,  if  occasion  should  offer,  in 
Paris  itself,"  it  was,  in  my  judgment,  no  crime 
to  take  him  and  shoot  him.  If  that  was  the 
fact,  the  duke  was  virtually  ^^otrficeps  criminis. 
He  may  have  been,  and  no  doubt  was,  ignorant 
of  the  mode  employed  to  upset  the  consular 
government ;  but  it  is  not  to  be  suffered  for  an 
instant  that  a  man  should  be  allowed  to  escape 
merely  because  he  chooses  not  to  know  the  de- 
tails of  the  plans  of  the  villains,  of  whose  suc- 
cess he  has  arranged  to  take  instant  advantage. 
The  man  who  is  waiting  in  the  street,  ready  to 
enter  a  house  as  soon  as  he  shall  hear  from  the 
bolder  ruffians  who  have  committed  the  bur- 
glary that  the  coast  is  clear,  can  hardly  be  con- 
sidered legally  or  morally  free  from  the  guilt  of 
the  murder  which  he  finds,  on  entering,  they 
have  committed.  It  will  not  do  for  him  to 
plead  ignorance  of  their  methods  or  precise  in- 
tentions. He  cannot  place  himself  in  the  situa- 
tion of  one  who  accidentally  profits  by  the  mur- 
der, as  would,  for  instance,  the  devisees  in  the 
will  of  the  murdered  man.  He  has  distinctly 
participated,  for  he  has  placed  himself  in  the 
street  in  order  to  take  advantage  of  the  doings 
in  the  house. 


74  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

Now,  if  you  will  imagine  an  outrage  of  this 
character  perpetrated  in  a  country  where  there 
are  no  tribunals  before  whom  the  man  in  the 
street  can  be  brought,  and  by  whom  the  house- 
holder can  be  protected,  you  have  the  case  of 
Bonaparte  and  the  Due  d'Enghien  in  a  nutshell, 
—  that  is,  if  the  Due  was  actually  at  Ettenheim 
for  the  purpose  of  crossing  the  border  as  soon 
as  he  should  or"et  Avord  from  Paris  that  the  time 
had  come.  It  is  amazuio:  to  me  how  Sir  Walter 
Scott  can  say,  as  he  does,  that  the  duke's  resid- 
ing "  at  Ettenheim  in  the  expectation  of  having 
soon  a  part  of  importance  to  play  in  France  " 
was  "  perfectly  vindicated  by  his  situation  and 
connections."  To  my  thinking,  if  Bonaparte 
believed  he  was  there  with  any  such  expectation, 
he  was  justified  in  arresting  him,  and  if,  on  the 
trial,  or  outside  of  it,  it  was  found  that  this  was 
the  fact,  he  was  justified  in  executing  him. 

Bonaparte  unquestionably  beheved,  when  he 
arrested  the  Due  d'Enghien,  that  he  was  resid- 
ino-  at  Ettenheim  in  full  communication  vvith  the 
disaffected  royahsts,  and  in  daily  expectation 
of  beino-  able  to  cross  the  Rhine  as  soon  as  he 
should  hear  that  he,  Bonaparte,  had  been  dis- 
posed of.  No  one,  I  suppose,  doubts  that  this 
was  Bonaparte's  belief  when  he  ordered  the  ar- 
rest. To  this  effect  had  been  the  reports  of  the 
officers  sent  to  inquire  concerning  the  duke's 
surroundino's  and  doino^s. 

I  think,  therefore,  that  the   Fhst  Consul  was 


THE   CONSULATE.  75 

fully  warranted  in  seizing  him.  True,  to  do  this 
it  was  necessary  to  violate  the  territory  of  Baden. 
But  this  was  the  affair  of  the  Margrave,  and  was 
easily  arranged.  Besides,  in  a  crisis  of  this  sort, 
no  man,  not  a  fool,  would  have  been  deterred  by 
any  consideration  of  this  nature. 

The  main  question  does  not  concern  the  ar- 
rest ;  it  is  whether  the  execution  was  justifiable. 

As  regards  the  proceedings  of  the  court-mar- 
tial, it  is  to  be  said  that  this  body  was  consti- 
tuted in  the  ordinary  way.  It  was  not  a  packed 
covQ't.  Brigadier-General  Hulin  was  the  presi- 
dent, by  virtue  of  seniority.  There  were  five 
colonels  of  regiments  in  Paris,  and  one  captain, 
on  the  court.  Another  captain  assisted  as  re- 
corder. They  were  convened  in  a  great  hurry, 
had  no  previous  conferences  with  each  other,  and 
did  not  know  in  the  least  whom  they  were  to  try. 

Our  knowledge  of  what  took  place  is  singu- 
larly small.  The  official  records,  ^4th  the  ex- 
ception of  the  sentence,  have  been  stolen  from 
the  archives  of  the  War  Department.  We  have, 
it  is  true,  a  draft  of  the  record,  made  by  the 
president  of  the  court-martial  for  his  own  use, 
and  no  doubt  it  is  substantially  correct  as  far 
as  it  goes,  but  it  does  not  contain  copies  of 
the  letters  and  other  papers  which  Hulin  says 
were  annexed  to  the  record.  Savary,  afterwards 
Due  de  Rovigo,  who  commanded  the  temporary 
garrison  of  the  castle  of  Vincennes,  tells  us 
that  all  the  documentary  evidence  against  Marie 


76  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

Antoinette  was  stolen  in  the  first  days  of  the 
Restoration,  in  1814,  from  the  archives  of  the 
Bureau  of  Justice,  and  it  may  be,  as  Savary  be- 
lieves was  the  case,  that  for  some  similar  reason 
the  archives  of  the  War  Department  were  rifled 
by  the  friends  of  the  Due  d'Enghien.  Be  this  as 
it  may,  however,  we  are  not  certain  by  any  means 
that  we  have  a  complete  record  of  the  proceed- 
inor;s. 

This  matter  becomes  important  for  this  reason. 
Savary,  who  was  present  at  the  trial,  tells  us 
that,  at  the  close  of  the  interrogatories,  one  of 
the  members  of  the  court  remarked  to  the  pris- 
oner, that  it  was  scarcely  probable  that  he  was  as 
completely  ignorant  as  he  had  said  that  he  was 
of  what  was  passing  in  France ;  that  he  would 
hardly  succeed  in  making  them  believe  that  he 
was  entirely  indifferent  to  events  of  which  the 
consequences  were  so  important  for  him  ;  and 
that  he  had  better  reflect  on  the  matter  before 
replying.  The  duke,  says  Savary,  after  a  mo- 
ment's silence,  replied  gravely  that  he  understood 
perfectly  well  what  was  meant ;  that  it  had  not 
been  his  intention  to  remain  indifferent  to  what 
was  going  on  ;  that  he  had  asked  to  be  permit- 
ted to  serve  in  the  English  army  ;  that  he  had 
been  told  that  this  could  not  be,  but  that  he  was 
to  remain  on  the  Rhine  where  he  would  soon 
have  a  part  to  play ;  and  for  this  he  was  wait- 
ing. Savary  says  that  this  was  the  Prince's  pre- 
cise reply  ;  and  that  he  wrote  it  down  at  the  time. 


THE   CONSULATE.  77 

It  is  on  this  reply  that  Scott  bases  his  state- 
meut  about  the  duke's  purpose  in  staying  at 
Ettenheini.  Its  authenticity  rests  on  the  single 
word  of  Savary.  Neither  General  Hulin's  copies 
of  the  minutes,  nor  his  pamphlet  published  in 
1824,  contain  any  mention  of  it.  Still,  it  seems 
clear,  from  Savary's  account,  that  the  remark  of 
the  officer  was  not  in  the  nature  of  a  formal  in- 
terrogatory to  the  accused,  but  that  it  was  made 
after  the  evidence,  which,  by  the  way,  seems  to 
have  consisted  entirely  of  the  defendant's  admis- 
sions, was  in  ;  that  it  was  put  informally,  and  by 
way  of  giving  the  prisoner  an  opportunity  to  say 
a  word  in  mitigation  of  the  sentence,  and  was  not 
a  part  of  the  trial,  properly  so  called.  If  this 
was  so,  and  it  certainly  looks  like  it,  the  absence 
of  the  statement  and  reply  from  the  report  of 
the  trial  are  accounted  for. 

The  members  of  the  court-martial  had  no 
choice  but  to  find  the  prisoner  guilty  on  the 
first  two  charges.  The  law  was  clear  ;  and  as 
regards  the  prisoner's  having  fought  and  still 
desiring  to  fight  against  France,  and  his  being 
in  the  pay  of  England,  his  own  avowals  were  ex- 
plicit. As  regards  his  connection  with  the  exist- 
ing conspiracies,  he  certainly  did  not  admit  as 
much  as  this,  but  he  frankly  stated,  if  we  are 
to  believe  Savary,  and  I  think  there  is  no  reason 
why  we  should  not,  that  he  was  on  the  Rhine 
waiting  for  his  part  to  begin. 

But,  —  and  this  is  by  far  the  more  interesting 


78  THE   FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

and  important  question,  —  wliy  did  Bonaparte 
send  the  duke  before  a  court  which  coukl  not 
but  find  him  guilty  and  sentence  him  to  death  ? 

Certainly  not  because  Bonaparte  wished  to 
punish  him  for  having  fought  against  the  re- 
public ;  no  one  has  ever  pretended  this. 

Was  it,  then,  as  so  many  have  supposed,  an 
act  done  solely  to  strike  terror  into  the  hearts  of 
the  Bourbon  princes,  and  without  any  evidence 
showing  the  complicity  of  the  duke  with  the 
plots  of  the  royalists  ?  ' 

I  think  not ;  I  think  that  Bonaparte  had  evi- 
dence before  him  which  convinced  him  that  the 
duke  was  cognizant  of  the  existence  of  a  royal- 
ist conspiracy,  and  was  residing  near  the  border 
in  the  hope  of  being  soon  called  upon  to  take  an 
active  part  in  affairs.  I  am  not  now  referring  to 
the  duke's  avowal  at  the  trial,  of  which  Savary 
informs  us.  Bonaparte,  of  course,  never  heard 
of  this  till  after  the  execution.  I  refer  to  the 
duke's  papers,  which  were  seized  at  Ettenheim 
when  he  was  arrested.  The  mistake  most  histo- 
rians have  made  is  to  look  solely  to  the  trial  for 
the  evidence  on  which  the  duke  was  put  to 
death  :  the  real  question  is.  Why  was  he  tried? 
To  get  light  on  this  we  must  look  in  a  wholly 
different  direction. 

That  there  were  some  papers  seized  at  Etten- 
heim, we  know,  for  we  have  the  duke's  own 
journal  containing  a  narrative  of  his  arrest,  and 
of  his  being  carried  to  Strasburg.     On  the  15th 


THE   CONSULATE.  79 

of  March,  the  day  of  his  arrest  at  Ettenheim,  he 
says  :  "  My  papers  were  carried  oii'  and  sealed 
up."  On  the  16th  he  says :  "  At  half  past 
four,  they  come  to  examine  my  papers,  which 
Colonel  Chariot,  accompanied  by  a  commissary 
of  safety,  opens  in  my  presence.  They  read 
them  superficially.  They  do  them  up  in  sepa- 
rate bundles,  and  leave  me  to  understand  that 
they  are  to  be  sent  to  Paris."  On  the  17th  he 
says :  "  They  come  to  get  me  to  sign  the  proces- 
verbal  of  the  opening  of  my  papers.  I  demand 
and  obtain  to  add  to  it  an  explanatory  note,  to 
prove  that  I  have  never  had  other  intentions 
than  to  serve  in  and  make  war." 

Now,  if  the  duke's  papers  contained  nothing 
of  a  suspicious  or  compromising  nature,  why  did 
he  accompany  them  with  this  note?  If  they 
did  not  contain  something  that  indicated  pretty 
clearly  his  being  implicated  in  some  doings  that 
could  by  no  means  fall  under  the  head  of  open 
warfare,  why  did  the  duke  append  this  explan- 
atory note,  that  he  never  had  any  other  inten- 
tions than  to  serve  in  and  make  war  ?  Or,  may 
we  not  at  any  rate  fairly  infer  that  these  papers 
contained  evidence  of  somebody  else's  intentions 
to  embark  in  enterprises  that  were  very  different 
from  honorable  warfare,  and  that  the  duke  was 
anxious  to  clear  his  skirts  of  the  connection  ? 
Something  of  this  kind,  depend  upon  it,  induced 
the  duke  to  ask  permission  to  add  this  explana- 
tory note  to  the  proces-verbal  of  his  papers. 


80  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

But  this  is  not  all.  On  the  18th  of  March, 
Napoleon  had  the  papers.  On  that  day  we  find 
him  writing  to  Talleyrand  about  the  behavior 
at  Vienna  of  a  certain  man  mentioned  in  them, 
and  on  the  19th,  the  day  before  the  court-mar- 
tial was  ordered,  we  find  Naj)oleon  sending  the 
papers  to  Real,  one  of  the  Council  of  State,  who 
was  afterwards  charged  with  the  examination  of 
the  prisoner.  (I  need  hardly  remind  my  read- 
ers that  in  the  whole  matter  of  criminal  proce- 
dure, the  French  method  is  a  wholly  different 
one  from  that  prescribed  by  the  common  law.) 

On  the  next  day,  the  20th,  the  Fu*st  Consul 
decrees  that  the  duke  should  be  brought  before 
a  court-martial,  and  he  also  writes  a  long  letter 
to  Real,  which  the  latter  receives  that  evening, 
ordering  him  to  go  to  Vincennes  at  once,  and 
giving  him  eleven  points  on  which  he  wishes  him 
to  have  the  duke  examined.  I  will  give  one  or 
two  of  these  questions  :  "5.  Have  you  not  pro- 
posed to  raise  a  legion,  and  to  cause  the  troops 
of  the  republic  to  desert,  in  saying  that  your  so- 
journ for  two  years  near  the  frontier  had  put 
you  in  the  way  of  having  an  understanding  with 
the  troops  stationed  on  the  Rhine?  ...  8. 
What  correspondence  is  this  that  you  have  with 
people  in  Alsace  ?  And  what  is  this  that  you 
have  with  people  in  Paris  ?  What  is  this  that 
you  have  with  people  in  Breda  and  in  the  army 
of  Holland  ?  " 

These  are  questions  contained  in  a  letter  which 


THE   CONSULATE.  81 

Napoleon  sent  to  tlie  councillor  of  state,  whom 
he   had  charjred   with   the    examination  of    the 
duke.      They   are   not    statements  made   in   an 
apology  for  the  execution  of  the  duke.     They 
are  not   contained  in  a  manifesto  of  any  kind. 
The  letter  in  which  they  are  to  be  found  was 
never  intended  to  reach  the  public  eye,  and  was 
published,  I  believe,  for  the  first  time,  in  1865. 
These  are  points  in  regard  to  which  Napoleon, 
after  he  had  read  the  duke's  correspondence,  de- 
sii*ed  the   duke  to  be  questioned.     These  ques- 
tions are  manifestly  framed  after  reading  that 
correspondence.      There    can,  I   submit,  be    no 
reasonable  doubt  that  some  of  the  letters  found 
at  Ettenheim  came  from  Alsace,  Paris,  Breda, 
from  officers  in   the  army  in   HoUand ;   that  in 
some  of  these  letters  reference  is  made  to  letters 
received  from   the  duke,  in  which  he  had   said 
something  about  his  sojourn  near  the  Rhine  for 
two  years  having  enabled  him  to  have  an  under- 
standing: with   some   of  the  French  officers  sta- 
tioned  in  that  neighborhood,  that  he  thought  he 
could  induce  the  troops  to  desert,  and  so  forth. 
No   one  can   believe  that  Napoleon,  writing  to 
Real,  after  having  read  the   duke's  papers,  in- 
vented out  of  his  own  head  the  subject-matter  of 
these    questions.     It  was  with  reference  to  the 
contents  of  those  letters  that  the  duke  appended 
that  explanatory  note  to  the  2)i^oces-verhaI  of  his 
papers,  for  the  duke  says  so  himself  ;  and  from 
the  questions  framed  by  Bonaparte  after  he  had 
6 


82  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

examined  the  papers,  we  can  get  a  pretty  good 
notion  of  the  duke's  motive  in  so  doino*. 

But  we  are  not  left  in  this  matter  to  mere  in- 
ference. The  Count  Miot  de  MeHto,  who  was 
also  one  of  the  Council  of  State,  and  was  espe- 
cially charged  with  investigating  the  charges 
against  Moreau,  states  in  his  memoirs  that  among 
the  papers  seized  at  Ettenheim  was  "a  list  of 
persons  in  France  on  whom  the  duke  might  have 
relied.  This  list,"  he  says,  "  was  said  to  contain 
the  names  of  certain  councillors  of  state,  such  as 
Barbe-Marbois,  Simeon,  Portalis,  and  others.  It 
has  been  proved  by  subsequent  events  that  these 
imputations  were  not  unfounded ;  it  is  therefore 
all  the  more  remarkable  that  no  injury  resulted 
from  them  to  the  persons  involved.  They  con- 
tinued to  enjoy  Bonaparte's  favor,  and  to  serve 
him  as  long  as  his  power  lasted."  Melito  also 
gives  us  Bonaparte's  explanation,  made  a  few 
days  after  the  affair,  to  the  Council  of  State,  in 
which  he  says :  "  It  will  be  seen  by  the  papers 
we  have  seized  that  he  (the  duke)  had  established 
himself  at  Ettenheim  so  as  to  carry  on  a  corre- 
spondence with  the  interior  of  France." 

One  other  thing  may  be  mentioned  in  this 
connection.  When  the  duke  signed  the  proces- 
verbal  of  his  evidence  at  the  trial,  for  by  French 
law  his  own  evidence  is  read  to  the  accused,  and 
he  signifies  his  admission  that  it  is  correctly  re- 
ported by  signing  the  document,  he  wrote  an  ur- 
gent demand  that  he  might  be  permitted  to  have 


THE   CONSULATE.  83 

a  private  audience  with  the  First  Consul.  There 
was,  therefore,  unquestionably  something  to  be 
exj)lainecl ;  not  that  any  of  the  facts  which  he 
had  so  frankly  admitted  at  the  trial  about  his 
participation  in  the  wars  against  the  republic,  or 
his  having  been  in  the  receipt  of  an  allowance 
from  England,  needed  or  were  capable  of  an 
explanation ;  still  less  can  we  suppose  that  he 
wished  to  humiliate  himself  before  the  man  whom 
he  considered  a  usurper,  and  implore  his  par- 
don. No  ;  there  was  evidently  something  which 
weighed  on  his  mind,  something  in  the  papers 
which  had  been  seized  that  looked  as  if  he  had 
entertained  projects  which  were  not  those  of 
honorable  warfare  ;  and  he  wanted  to  see  Bona- 
parte and  explain  this.  Probably,  what  the  duke 
wanted  to  say  was  that  his  own  personal  share 
in  the  enterprises  disclosed  by  the  papers  was  to 
be  a  purely  military  one,  and  no  doubt  this  was 
true.  Nevertheless,  if  he  resided  at  Ettenheim 
rather  than  in  London,  for  instance,  in  order,  as 
his  correspondence  seems  to  indicate,  that  he 
might  act  with  certain  advantages,  when  the 
time  should  come  for  him  to  act,  he  had,  in 
fact,  made  his  arrangements  to  profit  by  the 
conspiracy  of  Georges,  ignorant  as  he  preferred 
to  remain  of  its  methods. 

Accordingly,  I  cannot  doubt  that  Bonaparte, 
who  examined  the  papers  found  at  Ettenheim 
before  the  duke's  arrival  in  Paris,  found  quite 
enough  in  them  to  satisfy  him  that  the  duke  had 


84  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

been  cognizant  of  all  sorts  of  political  intrigues 
in  France ;  that  he  was  in  correspondence  with 
disaffected  persons,  and  was  preparing  to  play 
his  part  when  his  way  should  be  made  clear.  He 
therefore  had  him  brought  before  a  court-mar- 
tial, and  ordered  one  of  the  members  of  the 
Council  of  State  to  charge  himself  with  the  ex- 
amination of  the  prisoner  on  the  points  raised  by 
an  inspection  of  his  papers. 

We  come  now  to  the  only  really  obscure  thing 
in  this  whole  matter.  How  did  it  happen  that 
the  trial  and  execution  were  hurried  through 
with  such  precipitation  that  the  First  Consul's 
intentions  as  to  the  examination  of  the  didie 
were  not  carried  out?  Why  did  not  Real  ar- 
rive in  season  to  propound  to  the  duke  the  inter- 
rosfatories  which  the  First  Consul  had  so  care- 
fully  drawn  up  ?  or  rather,  as  the  First  Consul 
points  out  in  his  letter  to  Real,  to  instruct  the 
officer  who  would  act  as  judge-advocate  to  put 
the  questions.  Real  being  unable,  as  being  a  ci- 
vilian, to  take  part  in  the  proceedings  ?  Why  was 
not  this  done  ?  It  seems  perfectly  clear  that 
Bonaparte  expected  the  questions,  which  he  had 
prepared,  to  be  put,  and  he  no  doubt  expected  to 
get  something  out  of  them.  But  at  eight  o'clock 
in  the  morning,  Colonel  Savary,  on  his  way  to 
Paris,  meets  Councillor  Real,  —  who  had  the 
evening  before,  received  the  First  Consul's  letter, 
—  with  the  list  of  questions  in  his  pocket,  and, 
probably,  the  duke's  papers  also,  ready  to  hold  a 


THE   CONSULATE.  85 

consultation  with  the  judge-advocate,  and  see 
that  the  information  which  the  First  Consul  ex- 
pected to  extract  from  the  prisoner  was  obtained, 
if  possible. 

The  amazement  of  Real  on  hearing  of  the 
duke's  execution  was  so  great  that  Savary,  as  he 
tells  us,  determined  to  go  straight  to  Malmaison 
without  going  home  first,  and  tell  Bonaparte  at 
once  what  had  occurred.  The  First  Consul  was 
equally  astounded,  and  told  Savary  that  there 
was  something  in  the  matter  that  he  could  not 
understand ;  not  that  the  court  should  have  con- 
demned the  duke  upon  his  own  admissions,  but 
that  the  trial  should  have  taken  place  before 
Real  had  had  the  duke  interrogated. 

That  Murat,  then  military  governor  of  Paris, 
was  to  a  certain  extent  responsible  for  the  pre- 
cipitate action  of  the  court-martial,  seems  very 
probable.  His  order  appointing  the  court-mar- 
tial contains  every  justification  for  haste.  "  Cette 
commission  se  reunira  sur-le-champ  au  chateau 
de  Vincennes,  pour  y  juger,  sans  desemparer,  le 
prevenu." 

But  this  is  not  enough  of  itself.  After  the 
trial,  the  proceedings  ought  to  have  been  sent  to 
Murat  for  approval.  This  was  not  done.  Hulin, 
the  president  of  the  court,  says  that  the  court 
had  no  purpose  of  carrying  out  the  sentence  im- 
mediately ;  that  he  supposed  the  proceedings 
were  to  be  sent,  as  was  customary,  to  the  proper 
authorities.     He  evidently  thought  Savary  was 


86  THE  FIRST  XAPOLEOX. 

responsible  for  the  promptitude  with  which  the 
sentence  was  carried  out.     But  in  this  opinion  he 
was  mistaken.     All  that  Savary  did  was  to  fur- 
nish the  detail  of  men  to  carry  out  the  sentence, 
when  requested  to  do  so  by  the  judge-advocate. 
The  real  truth  seems    to  have    been    that  the 
members  of  the  court  were,  as   General   Hulin 
says,  entirely  ignorant  of  law,  and   the  judo-e- 
advoeate  and  recorder  had  had  hardly  more  expe- 
rience than  the  rest.     The  first  draft  of  proceed- 
ings, which  was  signed  by  the  seven  officers  who 
constituted  the   court,   contained  the   following 
sentence  :    "  Ordonne  que  le  present  jugement 
sera  execute  de  suite,  a  la  diligence  du  capitaine- 
rapporteur."     The  judge-advocate  ( capitaine-rap- 
porteur)  conceived  himself  bound  to  carry  out 
the  sentence  at  once,  and  he  asked  and  obtained 
from  Savary,  as  has  been  said,  a  detail  for  the 
purpose.     It  seems  to  me  more  likely  that  this 
extreme  haste  was  due  to  the  fact  that  the  words 
"  de  suite  "  slipped  unobserved  into  the  sentence, 
than  that  it  was  the  result  of  any  more  occult 
cause.     In  fact,  this  first  draft  of  the  record  is 
full  of  imperfections  of  various  kinds.     But  I  do 
not  find  any  evidence  whatever  tendinor  to  show 
that  Bonaparte  was  in  any  way  responsible  either 
for  the  trial  having  taken  place  on  the  night  of 
the  20th  and  21st,  or  for  the  execution  of  the 
sentence  before  it  had  been  sent  to  the  proper 
authorities  for  revision   and   approval.     On  the 
contrary,  there  is  every  reason  to  beheve  that 


THE   CONSULATE.  87 

the  First  Consul  expected  that  the  trial  would 
not  take  place  till  the  morning  of  the  21st. 
And  there  is  no  evidence,  one  way  or  the  other, 
as  to  his  intentions  in  regard  to  following  up 
any  such  sentence  by  the  execution  of  the  duke. 
The  truth  seems  to  be,  the  Due  d'En^rhien  was 
tried  and  executed  with  a  promptitude  that  was 
entirely  unexpected  to  the  First  Consul ;  and, 
although  he  preferred  to  assume  the  responsi- 
bility for  the  act,  no  one  has  a  right  to  say 
what  would  have  been  the  duke's  fate  had  not 
Bonaparte's  decision  been  thus  anticipated. 


LECTURE  m. 

NAPOLEON    IN    GERMANY. 

The  conspiracy  of  Georges  Cadoudal  and  the 
execution  of  the  Due  d'Enghien  occupied  a  large 
portion  of  the  last  lecture ;  nevertheless,  I  can- 
not dismiss  the  subject  without  a  few  words 
more.  Georges  and  a  few  of  the  chief  leaders 
were  executed ;  but  the  First  Consul  pardoned 
several  whose  guilt  was  confessed.  There  was 
not  only  no  indiscriminate  severity,  but  there 
was  a  great  deal  of  leniency  shown  in  dealing 
with  the  authors  and  abettors  of  this  plot.  Mo- 
reau,  who  was  proved  to  have  had  interviews 
with  Pichegru,  whose  association  with  Georges 
was  admitted,  was  brought  to  trial,  and  sen- 
tenced to  two  years'  imprisonment.  It  was  a 
light  sentence,  certainly,  but  the  First  Consul 
gladly  commuted  it  to  exile,  and,  by  purchasing 
Moreau's  house  for  a  round  sum,  placed  it  within 
his  power  to  live  as  became  a  man  who  had  ren- 
dered such  distinguished  service  to  his  country. 
The  execution  of  the  Due  d'Enghien  stopped 
further  royalist  plots.  The  Bourbons  perceived 
that  the  new  chief  of  the  French  nation  was  not 
a  man  against  whom  it  was  safe  to  conspire. 


NAPOLEON  IN  GERMANY.  89 

We  must  return  for  a  while  to  the  domestic 
policy  of  the  new  government.  This  was  a 
course  confessedly  energetic,  wise,  liberal,  and 
conciliatory.  Bonaparte  found  the  finances  in 
extreme  disorder ;  it  was  difficult  to  raise  the 
money  needed  for  the  army.  But  if  there  was 
one  subject  which  Bonaparte  understood  better 
than  another,  it  was  finance ;  his  vigorous  intel- 
lect enjoyed  mastering  those  problems  of  econ- 
omy which  have  always  been  so  attractive  to 
great  statesmen.  Assisted  by  the  best  talent  he 
could  procure,  he  initiated  a  series  of  changes 
which  at  once  stopped  the  leaks,  and  laid  all 
the  resources  of  the  country  under  fair  and  equal 
contribution.  The  funds  rose  in  value ;  the  world 
of  business  recognized  very  clearly  that  affairs 
were  now  in  the  hands  of  a  business  man,  and  a 
man,  too,  of  first-rate  business  capacity. 

Yet  it  is  hard  to  satisfy  some  men.  Lanfrey, 
whose  perverse  ingenuity  is  rather  severely  taxed 
on  this  occasion,  in  speaking  of  Bonaparte's 
"  decided  preference  for  upright  administration," 
asks,  "  what  can  be  more  skilful  than  the  em- 
ployment of  honest  agents  in  a  crooked  policy?" 
This  is,  by  the  way,  not  an  unfair  specimen  of 
Lanfrey's  method  in  dealing  with  facts ;  he  is 
an  adept  at  throwing  out  an  insinuation  so  skil- 
fully that  the  careless  reader  will  sw^allow  it  as  if 
it  were  propounded  to  him  as  a  fact.  Here,  for 
instance,  Lanfrey  is  dealing  with  Bonaparte's 
admitted   preference    in    his    administration   for 


90  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

honest  men.  But  tlie  suggestion  of  the  crooked 
policy  positively  has  the  effect  of  making  us  think 
there  is  almost  something  culpable  in  preferring 
honest  to  dishonest  men.  But  what  is  the  jus- 
tification of  this  suggestion  ?  Absolutely  none. 
The  work  which  Bonaparte's  cabinet  were  to  per- 
form was  straightforward  hard  work  in  all  the 
departments  of  government ;  there  was  nothing 
crooked  about  it  at  all ;  and  Lanfrey  knew  it. 
France  was  in  a  state  of  administrative  disorder ; 
the  finances,  especially,  needed  attention ;  the 
law  regulating  assessment  of  land,  which  formed 
the  basis  of  one  of  the  principal  taxes,  was  very 
defective;  the  schools  and  universities  needed 
supervision ;  there  was  a  great  deal  of  hard  and 
faithful  work  to  be  done,  and  it  was  done  by 
these  honest  and  capable  and  laborious  men 
whom  the  First  Consul  called  about  him ;  and 
Lanfrey  gives  them  credit  for  it  too.  Yet  he 
throws  out  the  slur  about  "  a  crooked  policy  "  to 
prevent  his  victim  from  having  even  the  merit 
accorded  to  him  of  having  selected  these  worthy 
men  for  their  several  tasks.  Why  does  he  thus 
go  out  of  his  way  to  asperse  the  motives  of 
Napoleon  ?  In  other  words,  why  this  virulent 
hatred  of  Napoleon  ?  Because  Lanfrey  and  all 
his  school  confuse  political  rights  with  political 
and  legal  liberties ;  they  do  not  see  that  it  was 
the  latter  only  that  had  been  conferred  by  the 
Revolution,  and  that  the  granting  of  political 
rights  by  the  decrees  of  the  National  Assembly 


NAPOLEON  IN  GERMANY.  91 

did  not  result  in  the  possession  and  exercise  of 
political  power  by  the  French  people,  who  were 
as  despotically  governed  from  1792  to  1799  as 
either  before  or  after  that  date.  Lanfrey  and  his 
school  accordingly  detest  Napoleon  because  of  his 
assumption  of  the  supreme  authority,  forgetting 
that,  in  assuming  it,  he  deprived  the  people  of  no 
political  power  that  they  then  were  exercising,  or 
ever  had  exercised ;  that  to  them  the  Eighteenth 
of  Brumaire  meant  merely  a  change  of  masters, 
a  change  from  men  who  were  cordially  detested 
and  distrusted,  to  a  man  whom  every  one  ad- 
mired, and  in  w  hom  everybody  placed  confidence. 
Excuse  this  digression  upon  Lanfrey :  but  I  am 
very  anxious  to  make  this  part  of  my  subject 
perfectly  clear,  and  for  this  purpose  I  cannot  do 
better  than  to  show  where  this  historian,  writ- 
ing from  the  extreme  republican  standpoint,  has 
fallen  into  grave  error. 

The  most  important  measure  of  the  Consulate 
w^as  undoubtedly  the  Code  Napoleon.  No  other 
work  of  Napoleon's  will  live  as  long  as  this.  It 
is  to  day  the  framework  of  law  in  France,  Hol- 
land, Belgium,  western  Germany,  Switzerland, 
and  Italy.  In  France  it  replaced  a  chaos  of  laws 
and  decrees,  and  welded  the  old  legislation  which 
was  worth  retaining  with  the  new  improvements 
of  the  revolutionary  epoch. 

The  importance  of  the  share  taken  by  Napo- 
leon in  this  matter  of  the  Code  is  not  to  be  meas- 
ured by  the  legal  learning,  or  even  by  the  prac- 


92  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

tical  common  sense,  which  he  contributed  to  its 
provisions.  Without  a  doubt,  the  credit  of  com- 
bining* into  a  consistent  whole  the  immense  mass 
of  law  and  custom  which  had  to  be  considered 
and  sifted,  belongs  to  the  eminent  jurists  whom 
the  First  Consul  employed  in  the  work.  Napo- 
leon very  likely  made  many  valuable  sugges= 
tions ;  it  is  certain  that  when  it  was  necessary  to 
come  to  a  decision,  his  clear  mind,  instructed  by 
the  discussions  of  his  counsellors,  found  little 
difficulty  in  arriving  at  the  right  conclusion,  and 
it  is  equally  certain  that  he  permitted  no  unnec- 
essary loss  of  time  in  announcing  the  decision 
at  which  he  had  arrived.  But  however  valuable 
his  contributions  may  have  been  to  the  composi- 
tion and  structure  of  the  Code,  it  is  not  in  this 
direction  chiefly  that  we  are  to  look,  if  we  would 
find  the  great  service  which  he  rendered  to  his 
country  in  this  matter.  It  is  rather  to  the  fact 
that  he  saw  at  once  on  his  accession  to  power 
that  such  a  measure  was  absolutely  necessary  to 
consolidate  the  newly  acquired  benefits  which 
the  Revoli;tion  had  conferred  on  the  French  peo- 
ple ;  and  that,  miHtary  man  though  he  was,  he 
carried  through  with  promptitude,  wisdom,  and 
energy  this  gigantic  task  to  a  speedy  termination. 
It  was  not  that  he  was  the  first  man  who  had 
thought  that  a  codification  of  the  laws  would  be 
desu'able ;  the  subject  had  been  broached  for  fifty 
years,  and  in  fact  the  work  had  been  planned  by 
the  decrees  of  the  convention.     It  was  not  that 


-t 


NAPOLEON  IN  GERMANY.  93 

he  was  the  first  among  rulers  actually  to  set 
about  a  codificatioa  of  the  laws ;  this  may  be 
true,  but  it  is  also  true  that  a  measure  of  this 
sort  was  more  obviously  desirable,  in  the  condi- 
tion in  which  he  found  France,  than  any  similar 
undertaking  could  have  appeared  to  the  rulers  of 
countries  which  had  escaped  the  disorganization 
mcident  to  a  revolution,  and  into  which  the  new 
system  had  not  yet  gained  an  entrance.  But 
what  he  is  to  be  credited  with  is  this :  with  hav- 
ing taken  at  once  the  true  view  of  the  needs  of 
France  in  this  regard,  > —  the  true  view,  the  view 
which  a  real  statesman  would  take  ;  and,  further- 
more, with  having,  promptly  and  persistently, 
and  at  a  very  considerable  expense  to  himself  of 
time  taken  from  other  and  perhaps  more  congen- 
ial duties,  and  of  labor  for  which  neither  his 
education  nor  his  habitual  occupation  had  fitted 
him,  pushed  the  work  through  to  an  eminently 
satisfactory  conclusion. 

This  task  was  undertaken  by  Napoleon  in  the 
spirit  and  with  the  energy  which  belonged  to 
him  as  a  first-rate  man  of  affairs.  His  appreci- 
ation of  its  importance  showed  him  to  be  far 
more  than  a  mere  soldier,  in  fact,  to  be  a  great 
statesman ;  and  it  is  not  unlikely  that  his  name 
will  be  more  widely  known  through  the  Code 
Napoleon  than  by  the  lustre  of  his  victories.  It 
was  a  work  of  which  he  was  always  very  proud ; 
he  always  spoke  of  it  as  one  of  the  principal 
iabors  of   his   life.     And  it  is  morally  certain 


94  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

that,  had  it  not  been  for  the  systematic  arrange- 
ment and  codification  of  the  legal  residts  of  the 
great  liberal  movement  through  which  France 
had  just  passed,  and  for  the  ten  years,  from 
1804  to  1814,  during  which  the  Code  was  the 
law  of  the  land,  entering  into  and  determining 
the  public  and  private  relations  of  the  French 
people,  becoming  to  them  a  rule  of  justice  and  a 
priceless  possession,  the  restoration  of  the  Bour- 
bons would  have  swept  away  most  of  the  reforms 
of  the  revolutionary  period.  It  is  equally  cer- 
tain, as  we  shall  ere  long  have  occasion  to  ob- 
serve, that  the  Code  became  in  the  hands  of 
Napoleon  a  sure  and  a  most  convenient  means 
of  introducing  the  new  system  into  the  German 
and  Italian  possessions  which  afterwards  came 
under  the  dominion  of  the  Empire. 
<^  Another  measure  of  the  Consulate  was  the 
Concordat,  which  reestablished  the  Roman  Cath- 
olic Church  in  France  under  the  protection  of 
government,  much  as  the  Church  of  England  is 
established  in  that  country.  This  important  step 
was  not  taken  without  meeting  with  violent  and 
sincere  opposition  on  the  part  of  most  of  the 
prominent  men  who  had  supported  the  Revolu- 
tion. It  seemed  to  them  a  step  backwards.  It 
was  true  that  all  religions  were  to  be  freely  toler- 
ated, as  much  as  they  ever  had  been,  or  are  to- 
day. But  the  political  character  of  the  Roman 
Church,  the  danger  that  the  allegiance  due  from 
its  members  to  a  potentate  independent  of  France 


NAPOLEON  IN  GERMANY.  95 

might  in  some  way  conflict  with  the  obligations 
of  its  powerful  officers  to  obey  the  laws  of  the 
land,  the  opinion  held  by  very  many  in  the 
France  of  that  day  as  it  was  then  and  is  now 
held  by  nearly  everybody  in  the  United  States, 
that  civil  government  has  no  concern  whatever 
with  church  establishments,  all  these  co'nsidera- 
tions  were  urged  against  the  First  Consul's  pro- 
ject. And  there  was  undoubtedly  force  in  these 
arsruments.  Yet  I  am  inclined  to  think  that 
Bonaparte  did  wisely  in  giving  to  what  he  termed 
"the  church  of  the  majority  of  the  French  peo- 
ple "  the  inestimable  advantage  of  public  recog- 
nition and  support.  France  was  not  far  enough 
advanced  in  her  education,  that  is,  the  masses  of 
her  people  were  not,  to  make  it  safe  to  rely  solely 
on  the  voluntary  system.  The  alternative  was 
either  the  restoration  of  the  Roman  CathoHc 
Church,  or  leaving  France  without  the  regular 
institutions  of  Christianity.  He  chose  wisely,  I 
think,  in  taking  the  former  of  these  courses. 

In  his  negotiation  with  the  Pope,  he  held  out 
for  state  nominations  to  important  posts  in  the 
church,  and  for  a  strict  regulation  by  the  gov- 
ernment of  ecclesiastical  institutions.  But  his 
system  was  too  artificial ;  he  did  not  thoroughly 
understand  the  subject ;  he  gave  more  power  to 
the  bishops  over  the  clergy  than  they  had  been 
hitherto  possessed  of ;  but  his  new  bishops  were 
not  the  important  functionaries  of  state  that  the 
bishops  of  the  old  regivie  had  been;  they  not 


96  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

only  had  no  political  power,  but  their  doings 
and  sayings  were  closely  watched  by  a  not  very 
friendly  government-superior;  they  fell  back  upon 
their  purely  spiritual  powers,  and  hence  upon  the 
Bishop  of  Rome,  becoming  with  each  decade  less 
Galilean  and  more  Ultramontane.  But,  for  all 
this,  the  restoration  of  the  Catholic  Church  was, 
as  it  seems  to  me,  an  almost  indispensable  step 
in  the  then  demoralized  condition  of  France. 

One  more  step  remained  to  be  taken,  —  one 
more  change  in  the  form  of  government  to  be 
made,  —  that  from  the  Republic  to  the  Empire.- 
But  how  much  did  this  change  amount  to  ?  It 
certainly  did  not  carry  with  it  any  alteration  in 
the  laws  which  affected  life,  liberty,  and  the 
pursuit  of  happiness,  to  use  the  words  of  the 
immortal  Declaration.  The  great  fundamental 
changes  for  the  better  which  the  Revolution  had 
wrought  in  the  condition  of  the  people  of  France 
were  not  in  the  remotest  degree  affected.  In 
truth,  the  nation  demanded  the  change,  because 
it  believed  that  the  great  benefits  which  the 
Revolution  had  conferred  would  in  the  then  ex- 
istnig  state  of  public  feeling  in  France,  in  the 
stage  of  political  development  at  which  the 
French  people  had  then  arrived,  and  in  the  face 
of  the  unmistakable  and  unscrupulous  hostility 
which  the  success  of  the  new  order  of  things  in 
France  had  evoked  throughout  aristocratic  and 
legitimist  Europe,  be  more  secure  under  a  liberal 
monarch  like  Napoleon  than  under  the  forms  of 


NAPOLEON  IN   GERMANY.  97 

a  republic.  And  it  is  certainly  not  for  the  re' 
publican  theorist  to  quarrel  with  the  wish  of  the 
people.  Sad  and  deplorable  as  it  may  seem  to 
such  a  man  that  his  country,  at  a  certain  stage 
of  its  history,  should  care  less  about  further 
experiments  in  self-government  than  about  pro- 
tection by  a  strong  arm  from  foreign  attacks 
and  domestic  conspiracies,  yet,  if  the  fact  be  so, 
he,  as  a  professed  republican,  ought  to  bow  to 
the  will  of  the  people.  But,  without  troubling 
ourselves  further,  as  we  easily  might,  to  imprison 
our  republican  philosopher  in  the  web  of  his 
own  construction,  we  cannot  repress  a  smile  at 
the  unhappy  Lanfrey,  who  finds  his  people  so 
far  below  the  level  of  what  he  considers  manly 
pride  in  their  beloved  republic.  It  is  necessary 
for  Lanfrey  to  ride  two  horses  in  his  discussion 
of  this  subject ;  when  on  one  horse  he  assumes 
that  the  people  desire  the  Republic,  that  the 
Empire  is  forced  upon  them.  When  upon  the 
other,  he  bewails  the  actual  fact :  "  France," 
he  says,  "  was  passive  and  subdued  ;  she  had 
no  longer  either  will  or  opinion,  she  was  credu- 
lous and  ignorant."  It  never  seems  to  occur 
to  him,  that  if  the  people  of  a  country  are  pas- 
sive and  subdued,  ignorant  and  credulous,  have 
neither  opinion  nor  will  of  their  own,  they  cer- 
tainly are  not  fit  to  run  a  republic.  Such  a 
people  are  sure  to  have  somebody  to  govern 
them,  and  whether  it  be  four  or  five  Directors,  or 
two  or  three  Consuls,  or  an  Emperor,  it  matters 


98  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

little.  But  there  is  no  need  to  make  the  foolish 
lamentations  in  which  Lanfrey  and  his  school 
indulge  when  they  speak  of  the  Empire.  The 
people  of  France  had  advanced  in  the  Revolu- 
tion one  stage,  and  that  a  very  important  one,  in 
their  political  development ;  they  were  not  at 
that  time  ready  to  advance  the  remaining  steps ; 
what  they  had  done  was,  they  felt,  and  very 
rightly  too,  quite  enough  for  one  generation ; 
and  they  had  grave  reason  to  be  alarmed  at  the 
foreign  and  domestic  hostility  which  seemed  to  be 
awakened  everywhere  and  to  threaten  seriously 
their  ability  to  retain  what  they  had  gained. 
They  knew  perfectly  well  what  they  were  about ; 
in  fact,  it  was  the  Empire  which  not  only  con- 
solidated and  preserved  for  France  the  great  re- 
forms of  the  Revolution,  but  by  extending  them 
into  the  neighboring  countries,  prevented  France 
from  being  left  alone  in  her  experiment  with  the 
new  system,  gained  for  her  hearty  and  intelligent 
allies,  and,  in  spite  of  the  terrible  mistakes  which 
the  new  Emperor  made  in  the  later  years  of  his 
rule,  shattered  the  power  of  the  old  system 
throughout  a  great  part  of  Europe,  and  rendered 
the  triumph  of  the  reaction  when  it  came,  in 
1814,  a  far  less  serious  and  important  matter 
than  it  would  have  been  had  it  occurred  fifteen 
years  before. 

In  dealing  with  the  subject  which  these  words 
naturally  introduce,  —  the  foreign  relations  of 
the  Empire  of  Napoleon,  —  it  is  not  my  purpose 


NAPOLEON  IN  GERMANY.  99 

to  weary  you  with  an  attempt  at  a  connected  and 
full  narrative.  We  have  not  time  for  anything 
of  that  sort.  All  we  can  do  is  to  get  some  gen- 
eral notion  of  Napoleon's  policy,  its  purposes, 
and  its  results. 

The  peace  of  Luneville,  which  followed  the 
campaign  of  Marengo,  not  only  secured  the  with- 
drawal of  the  Austrian  influence  in  Northern 
Italy,  but  left  Piedmont  and  the  republics  which 
had  recently  been  organized  out  of  Lombardy 
and  some  of  the  lesser  states,  under  the  influence 
and  protection  of  France.  As  a  natural  conse- 
quence, Piedmont  was  annexed  to  France,  and 
the  new  republics  were  united  in  one,  under  the 
presidency  of  Bonaparte  himself.  As  regards 
Germany,  the  territory  on  the  left  bank  of  the 
Rhine  was  given  up  to  France.  Her  acquisitions 
in  Belgium  and  her  protectorate  over  Holland 
were  also  sanctioned.  More  than  this,  France 
was  by  the  same  treaty  admitted  to  share  in  the 
negotiations  which  the  recent  chang-es  had  ren- 
dered  necessary  in  the  Holy  Roman  or  German 
Empire,  of  which  the  Emperor  of  Austria  was 
the  head,  which  at  that  time,  it  will  be  remem- 
bered, still  existed  ;  and  it  needs  hardly  to  be  said 
that  France  exercised  her  full  share  in  the  deci- 
sions which  were  arrived  at  by  the  Diet.  In  his 
general  policy.  Napoleon  took  the  natural  course 
of  furthering;  the  interests  of  the  south  German 
states,  which  had  for  centuries,  as  a  rule,  had 
France  for  a  friend  and  ally  in  their  intermina- 


100  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

ble  quarrels  with  the  House  of  Hapsburg.  The 
influence  of  France  was  also  exerted  in  favor,  of 
the  extinguishment  of  the  petty  principalities,  of 
the  suppression  of  the  (so  called)  free  cities,  of 
the  secularization  of  the  enormous  possessions  of 
the  Roman  Catholic  Church.  In  these  changes, 
every  one  of  which  was  a  beneficial  change  for 
the  people,  Bavaria,  Wiirtemberg,  and  Baden  re- 
ceived great  accessions  of  territory,  and,  what 
was  very  important  for  Napoleon,  were  brought 
under  the  influence  of  France,  both  as  regarded 
their  internal  and  external  relations.  On  the 
one  hand,  they  were  attracted  to  follow  in  the 
steps  of  France,  to  abolish  the  antiquated  abuses 
and  inequalities  which  survived  to  such  a  de- 
plorable extent  throughout  Germany,  and  to  in- 
troduce the  administrative  efficiency  and  simpli- 
city which  they  saw  prevailing  in  their  neighbor's 
territories  ;  and  on  the  other,  by  taking  these 
very  steps  in  the  direction  of  reform,  they  were 
separating  themselves  still  further  from  the  reac- 
tionary poHcy  of  which  their  nominal  superior, 
the  Emperor  of  Germany,  was  the  chief  repre- 
sentative. 

For  thus  exerting  his  influence  in  these 
schemes  for  the  reorganization  of  Germany,  Na- 
poleon has  been  severely  blamed  by  those  who 
bow  down  to  the  newly  invented  deity  of  Ger- 
man nationality.  Take  an  illustration.  Among 
the  antiquated  nuisances  that  were  abated  by 
Bavaria  and  the  other  states  of  western  Ger- 


NAPOLEON  IN  GERMANY.  101 

many,  when,  under  the  impulse  of  France,  they 
entered  upon  the  path  of  reform,  was  the  Order 
of  the  Knights  of  the  Empii-e.  These  gentlemen 
lived  upon  certain  vexatious  imposts,  and  enjoyed 
a  sort  of  irregular  and  anomalous  jurisdiction 
over  their  neighbors.  To  abolish  their  privileges 
was  a  manifest  gain  for  the  cause  of  good  ad- 
ministration. One  of  these  chevaliers  was  the 
celebrated  Stein,  afterwards,  as  minister  of  Prus- 
sia, the  great  organizer  of  the  German  uprising 
of  1813  against  the  Empire  of  Napoleon.  Stein 
told  the  Duke  of  Nassau  that  he  was  protected 
by  the  same  laws  of  the  Empire  that  the  duke 
was,  and  that  he  and  the  other  petty  princes  had 
much  better  attach  themselves  to  the  two  great 
monarchies  of  Austria  and  Prussia  than  be  fol- 
lowino;  foreig-n  counsels  in  abolishing;;  vested 
rights  like  his.  With  such  a  position  I  have  no 
sympathy.  As  I  stated  in  my  first  lecture,  the 
vital  question  for  continental  Europe  at  that 
time  was  not  a  question  of  political  rights,  but  of 
personal  Hberty,  of  equality  before  the  law,  of 
religious  toleration,  of  the  continuance  or  the 
abolition  of  a  host  of  anomalous  and  oppressive 
privileges  that  lay  like  a  burden  upon  the  trade 
of  the  bourgeois  and  the  labor  of  the  peasant. 
But  there  is  another  way  of  looking  at  these 
questions.  I  have  before  me  a  valuable  contri- 
bution to  the  history  of  these  times,  Fyffe's 
"  Modern  Europe."  Mr.  FyfiPe  says,  "  that  the 
consolidation  of  Germany  should  be  worked  out 


a    W 


\K. 


S^ESV  »* 


102'  THE   F'lKST' NAPOLEON. 

in  the  interest  of  French  hireHngs,  instead  of  in 
the  interest  of  the  German  people,  was  justly 
treated  by  Stein  as  a  subject  for  patriotic  anger." 
Let  us  examine  this  assertion  a  little. 

Mr.  Fyffe  tells  us,  in  regard  to  the  sovereign- 
ties of  the  ecclesiastics  and  the  free  cities, 
which  were  both  suppressed  in  this  reorganiza- 
tion, that  "  the  internal  condition  of  the  priest- 
ruled  districts  was  generally  wretched  ;  heavy  ig- 
norance, beggary,  and  intolerance  kept  life  down 
to  an  inert  monotony  ;  "  that  "  the  free  cities, 
as  a  rule,  were  sunk  in  debt ;  the  management  of 
theu'  affairs  had  become  the  perquisite  of  a  few 
lawyers  and  privileged  families  ;  "  and  that  "  for 
Germany  as  a  nation  the  destruction  of  these 
petty  sovereignties  was  not  only  an  advantage, 
but  an  absolute  necessity."  If  this  be  a  true 
picture  of  the  state  of  the  case,  it  is  certainly 
matter  for  sincere  thankfulness  that  Bonaparte 
put  a  little  practical  common  sense  and  a  little 
wholesome  pressure  into  the  reorganization  of 
western  Germany,  and  that  the  poor  people 
there  were  not  obliged  to  wait  until  the  cause  of 
equal  rights  should  be  taken  up  by  the  King  of 
Prussia  and  the  Emperor  of  Austria.  Moreover, 
that  in  exerting  his  influence  in  the  matter  of 
these  reforms  Napoleon  was  not  outraging  any 
national  or  patriotic  feeling  is  admitted  by  Fyffe 
himself.  "  The  peoples  of  Germany,"  says  he, 
"  cared  as  little  about  a  Fatherland  as  their  kings. 
To  the  Hessian  and  the  Bavarian  at  the  centre 


NAPOLEON  IN  GERMANY.  103 

of  the  Empire,  Germany  was  scarcely  more  than 
it  was  to  the  Swiss  or  the  Dutch,  who  had  left 
the  Empire  centuries  before.  The  inhabitants 
of  the  Rhenish  provinces  had  murmured  for  a 
while  at  the  extortionate  rule  of  the  Directory ; 
but  their  severance  from  Germany  and  their  in- 
corporation with  a  foreign  race  touched  no  fibre 
of  patriotic  regret ;  and,  after  the  establishment 
of  a  better  order  of  things  under  the  Consulate, 
the  annexation  to  France  appears  to  have  become 
highly  popular.  Among  a  race  whose  members 
could  thus  be  actually  conquered  and  annexed 
without  violence  to  their  feelings,  Bonaparte  had 
no  difficulty  in  finding  willing  allies."  So  far 
Mr.  Fyffe. 

Very  well,  then,  if  his  allies  were  willing,  if 
the  annexation  to  France  was  satisfactory  to  the 
people,  as  you  say  was  the  case,  why,  I  should 
like  to  ask  the  learned  author,  why  and  of  whom 
do  you  complain  ?  Of  Bonaparte  ?  How  can 
you,  when  his  annexations  were  popular  and  his 
allies  willing?  Volenti  no)i  Jit  injuria.  Of 
these  German  communities?  Why  should  you 
undertake  to  put  your  opinion  against  theirs? 
What  business  is  it  of  yours  to  revise  their  judg- 
ment? And  have  you  considered  at  all,  have 
you  not  entirely  forgotten  to  consider,  what  was 
the  alternative  presented  to  them?  Is  it  not 
possible  that  the  obstinate  aristocratic  and  eccle- 
siastical despotism  of  Austria  might  appear  more 
terrible  than  participation  in  the  political  career 


104  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

of  the  freest  nation  on  the  Continent,  even  if 
that  nation  was  France  ?  Or  that  the  peasantry 
of  the  west  bank  of  the  Rhine  might  well  prefer 
the  position  of  French  soldiers,  drawn  as  they 
were  from  all  classes  in  life,  each  man  certain  to 
be  promoted  in  due  time  if  he  was  brave  and 
competent,  to  that  of  serving  in  the  Prussian 
army,  where  no  one  but  a  nobleman  could  by 
any  possibility  become  an  officer,  and  where  the 
free  use  of  the  cane  took  the  place  of  emulation 
and  ambition  ? 

I  am  tired  of  these  theorists.  Men  like  Lan- 
frey,  instead  of  looking  coolly  and  fairly  at  the 
actual  state  of  the  French  people  in  1799,  at 
what  they  had  gained  in  the  way  of  legal  and 
political  reforms,  at  what  they  actually  needed, 
and  what  they  were  fit  for,  pour  out  no  end  of 
reproaches  upon  their  own  nation  for  having  de- 
cided to  remain  content  for  the  time  being  with 
their  acquisitions,  and  to  consolidate  the  state  in 
order  to  defend  them.  Men  like  Fyffe,  instead 
of  comparing  the  relative  advantages  and  disad- 
vantages of  the  alternative  presented  to  the  peo- 
ples of  western  Germany  of  allying  themselves 
either  with  Austria  and  Prussia  or  with  France, 
and  then  telling  us  in  so  many  words  which  they 
consider  the  wisest  course,  omit  one  branch  of 
the  alternative  altogether  from  the  discussion, 
and  by  the  way  they  speak  of  the  other  clearly 
convey  the  impression  that  the  right  thing  for 
these  western  Germans  to  do  would  have  been 


NAPOLEON  IN  GERMANY.  105 

to  stand  by  Austria  and  Prussia,  and  postpone 
to  an  indefinite  future,  at  the  bidding  of  those 
powers,  the  much  needed  practical  reforms  which 
they  either  received  when  incorporated  into 
France,  or  which  were  introduced  mto  then*  re- 
spective countries  by  French  influence  durmg 
their  afliance  with  France.  If  they  really  think 
this,  then  I  have  the  honor  to  differ  from  them, 
toto  cado.  To  my  mind,  neither  Austria  nor 
Prussia  had  any  claim  on  the  loyalty  of  the  citi- 
zen of  Cologne  or  the  peasant  of  the  Palatinate. 
The  policy  of  both  powers  had  always  been 
grasping  and  unscrupulous.  At  this  very  time 
they  had  just  finished  the  third  partition  of 
Poland.  And  not  a  single  movement  in  the 
direction  of  practical  reHef.to  the  middle  and 
lower  classes  could  reasonably  be  expected  to 
come  from  either  power. 

To  my  thinking,  too,  the  inhabitants  of  west- 
ern Germany  acted  like  sensible  people  in  disre- 
garding this  vague  talk  about  the  Fatherland, 
and  in  takino;  the  shortest  and  most  efficacious 
course  to  secure  the  sweeping  reforms  which  they 
so  urgently  needed.  It  is  a  great  thing,  no 
doubt,  for  the  people  of  a  country  to  be  patri- 
otic. But  in  order  that  any  people  shoidd  be 
patriotic  they  must  first  have  a  country.  And 
by  a  country,  I  mean  not  a  vision  in  the  in- 
definite future,  but  a  fact  of  to-day,  and  of  a 
hundred  years  ago.  That  several  communities 
speak   the  same    language   does    not   constitute 


106  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

them  one  country,  however  distinctly  it  may 
point  to  their  common  origin.  One's  country 
is  not  an  inference  from  the  fact  of  a  common 
language  ;  still  less  is  it  a  dream  of  the  future. 
The  country  which  has  claims  upon  its  citizens 
must  in  the  nature  of  things  be  an  organized 
community,  with  a  history  of  which  all  its  citi- 
zens can  be  proud,  a  present  tangible  existence 
in  which  they  all  participate,  and  a  future  to 
which  they  can  all  look  forward.  I  am  not  re- 
proaching those  who  have  in  recent  times 
brought  about  the  political  unity  of  Germany 
under  the  hegemony  of  Prussia,  whether  they 
went  to  work  by  songs,  or  books,  or  secret  soci- 
eties, or  by  the  more  efficacious  method  of  the 
Bismarckian  blood  and  iron.  We  have  at  any 
rate  no  concern  with  their  conduct  here.  But  I 
do  mean  to  say  that  to  reproach  the  Germans  of 
the  Rhine  with  a  lack  of  patriotism  because  in 
their  several  states  they  stood  by  and  fought  for 
Napoleon  against  Austria  and  Prussia  backed 
by  Russia,  is  absurd  on  its  face. 

More  than  that,  —  it  was  to  France  that  west- 
ern Germany  had  always  looked  for  support 
from  the  time  of  the  Thii'ty  Years  War ;  it  was 
France  that  had  all  along  prevented  the  absorp- 
tion of  these  communities  in  the  Austrian  Em- 
pire. The  Germans  of  the  Rhine  had  much  more 
in  common  with  the  French  than  they  had  with 
the  inhabitants  of  Hungary  or  Pomerania,  with 
Paris  than  with  Berlin  or  Vienna.     They  shrank 


NAPOLEON  IN   GERMANY.  107 

back  with  merited  dislike  and  dread  from  the 
crushing  conservatism  of  the  three  eastern  mihtary 
monarchies,  Russia,  Austria,  and  Prussia ;  they 
gladly  and  thankf  idly,  and,  let  us  add,  wisely,  took 
the  hand  which  France  stretched  out  to  them, 
and  entered  cheerfully  and  hopefully  on  the  path 
of  reform,  in  which  she  had  led  the  way.  What 
was  it  to  them  that  the  military  aristocrats  of 
Prussia  spoke  German,  that  the  Kaiser  of  Aus- 
tria was  the  nominal  head  of  Germany  ?  Ought 
considerations  like  these  to  influence  intelligent 
public  opinion  in  western  Germany  to  receive  the 
word  of  command  from  the  successor  of  the 
Great  Frederic,  or  its  institutes  of  civil  and  re- 
Hgious  liberty  from  the  hand  of  a  Metternich  ? 
Let  me  speak  my  mind  on  this  matter.  I  have 
no  patience  with  people  who,  led  away  by  a  no- 
tion of  a  patriotism  which  at  that  time  could 
have  had  no  real  existence,  refuse  to  see  that  the 
side  of  France  was,  throughout  the  wars  of  the 
Revolution  and  the  Empire,  the  side  of  civil  and 
rehgious  liberty. 

The  important  changes  in  western  Germany, 
of  which  we  have  been  speaking,  greatly  in- 
creased the  predominance  of  France.  The  Ital- 
ian republic  had  recently  followed  the  example 
of  its  elder  sister,  and  had  become  a  kingdom. 
Napoleon  was  crowned  at  Milan  with  the  iron 
crown  of  Lombardy,  amid  great  enthusiasm  ;  and 
his  title  thenceforward  was  that  of  Emperor  of 
the   French  and  King  of  Italy.     He  delegated 


108  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

his  authority  in  the  latter  country  to  his  step- 
son  Eugene  Beauharnais,  a  man  of  high  charac- 
ter and  good  abilities,  who  assumed  the  title  of 
Viceroy  of  Italy. 

These  peaceful  victories  aroused  anew  the 
jealousy  and  perhaps  even  the  alarm  of  Austria. 
Enoland  had  broken  the  Peace  of  Amiens  in  the 

o 

spring  of  1803,  and  Russia  had  entered  into  alli- 
ance with  her  in  1804.  In  1805  Austria  joined 
the  coalition.  The  ostensible  cause  of  this  com- 
bined attack  on  Napoleon  was  the  disturbance 
of  the  balance  of  power  in  Europe,  caused  by 
the  aggrandizement  of  France  ;  and  this  was  un- 
questionably a  real  cause.  But  there  was  some- 
thin  or  behind  and  below  this :  there  was  the  feel- 
ing  that  Napoleon  represented  the  Revolution. 
Not  certainly  that  he  represented  the  excesses  of 
jacobinism ;  but  rather  that  he  was  the  cham- 
pion of  the  Hberal  cause,  and  the  foe  of  those 
unequal  and  oppressive  privileges  and  vested 
rights,  which  constituted  the  very  framework  of 
society  in  Austria,  Prussia,  Russia,  and,  I  might 
almost  add,  in  England  also.  There  was,  in 
short,  the  conviction  entertained  by  the  ruling 
classes  everywhere  that  he  and  his  system  must 
be  broken  down,  or  the  old  order  of  things  in 
Europe  would  fall.  Hence  these  repeated  coali- 
tions. 

Napoleon  had  been  for  more  than  a  year  as- 
semblintr  and  oro-anizino-  a  larg-e  force  at  Bou- 
logne  for  his  projected  invasion  of  England.    He 


NAPOLEON  IN   GERMANY.  109 

undoubtedly  meant,  if  circumstances  should  favor 
him,  to  undertake  it.  He  gave  such  directions 
to  his  admirals  as  he  judged  would  enable  them 
to  elude  the  vigilance  of  the  British  fleet,  and  to 
sweep  the  English  Channel  for  the  brief  period 
during  which  his  crossing  could,  as  he  calcu- 
lated, be  made.  He  had  drilled  his  men  in 
embarking  and  disembarking,  and  I  am  afraid 
to  say  in  how  few  hours  he  expected  to  be  able 
to  land  160,000  men  in  England.  Had  his 
plans  succeeded,  he  could  no  doubt  in  a  few 
days  after  landing  have  destroyed  the  arsenals 
and  dockyards  at  Woolwich  and  Portsmouth, 
and  taken  London.  But  that  seems  to  me  to 
be  all  he  could  reasonably  have  expected  to 
do.  After  all,  160,000  men  of  all  arms  were 
certainly  not  too  many  for  his  needs.  The 
Enoflish  o-overnment  could  doubtless  have  col- 
lected  60,000  or  70,000  regular  troops,  and 
volunteers  would  have  been  at  once  forthcom- 
ing in  crowds.  The  best  drilled  militia  would 
be  used  to  fill  up  the  regular  regiments  and 
batteries  to  the  maximum  strength.  It  would 
not  have  taken  long  to  put  into  the  field  a 
formidable  force  of  at  least  100,000  men,  nearly 
all  of  whom  would  be  regular  troops ;  and, 
making  all  necessary  deductions  for  garrisons, 
guards  of  communications,  and  so  forth.  Na- 
poleon could  not  have  taken  the  field  with  a 
much  tarffer  force  than  this.  Under  these  cu*- 
cumstances  any  great    success    in   battle   would 


110  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

have  been  improbable.  The  Enghsh  regular 
troops  were  at  least  quite  as  good  as  the  best 
that  he  carried  with  him ;  and,  though  the  Eng- 
lish army  would  in  the  case  I  have  imagined 
have  been  more  or  less  diluted  with  recruits,  still 
it  would  have  been  a  force  exceedingly  hard  to 
beat  in  any  event ;  and,  had  it  played  a  waiting 
game,  and  its  commander  been  wise  enough  to 
remain  on  the  defensive  and  receive  the  assault 
of  the  French,  there  would  have  been  an  ex- 
tremely good  chance  for  a  victory  of  the  class 
of  Busaco,  Talavera,  or  Gettysburg.  And  it 
must  be  remembered  that  Napoleon  could  have 
got  no  reinforcements,  while  the  English  army 
would  have  been  augmented  daily.  If  he  was 
to  succeed  at  all  in  the  invasion  of  England,  it 
woidd  have  been  necessary  for  him  to  conquer 
the  country,  and  actually  possess  himself  of  its 
resources;  and,  without  reinforcements,  this 
would  not  have  been  possible.  But,  to  return 
from  these  speculations  on  what  might  have 
been,  the  French  navy  utterly  failed  the  Em- 
peror. It  has  always  been  hard  to  beat  the  Eng- 
lish on  their  favorite  element,  and  the  French 
admirals  of  that  day  were  certainly  no  match 
for  Nelson  and  Collingwood.  These  great  cap- 
tains and  their  able  subordinates  headed  off  the 
French  squadrons,  prevented  their  junction,  col- 
lected their  own  forces,  secured  an  unimpeded 
control  of  the  English  Channel,  and  finally,  in 
the  famous  battle  of  Trafalgar,  fought  on  the 


NAPOLEON  IN  GERMANY.  Ill 

21st  of  October,  1805,  annihilated  the  French 
and  Spanish  navies. 

Long  before  this,  however,  Napoleon  saw  that 
his  plan  had  miscarried  ;  and,  as  Austria  had  de- 
clared war,  and  was  invading  Bavaria,  he  ab- 
ruptly put  his  army  in  marching  order,  turned 
the  heads  of  his  columns  to  the  southeast,  and 
commenced  the  masterly  series  of  movements  that 
opened  the  brilliant  campaign  of  1805  by  the 
capture  of  Ulm  and  ended  it  with  the  battle  of 
Austerlitz. 

Already  had  his  political  combinations  begun 
to  yield  fruit.  Bavaria  had  refused  to  join  with 
Austria  and  Russia  in  this  new  attack  on  France. 
She  was  invaded,  to  be  sure,  but  her  territory 
was  soon  freed  from  the  enemy.  Wlirtemberg 
was  passive  at  first,  but  in  the  first  days  of  the 
campaign  joined  the  French.  Baden  and  Hesse 
Darmstadt  had  already  taken  sides  with  France. 
Hanover,  which  at  that  time  belonged  to  Eng- 
land, had  since  the  rupture  of  the  peace  of 
Amiens  been  occupied  by  a  French  army.  Pos- 
sessed of  these  advantages,  it  was  possible  for 
Napoleon  to  pour  his  columns  through  Hanover, 
Hesse  Darmstadt,  Bavaria,  and  Wlirtemberg 
upon  the  communications  of  the  Austrian  gen- 
eral Mack,  who  had  advanced  to  Ulm,  on  the 
western  frontier  of  Bavaria,  without  his  suspect- 
ing any  movement  of  the  sort.  Mack  had  ex- 
pected that  Napoleon  would  operate  from  Stras- 
burg  as  his  base,  and  he  was  quietly  waiting  till  he 


112  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

should  hear  that  his  adversary  had  got  through 
or  got  round  the  Black  Forest,  when  he  found 
to  his  amazement  that  the  French,  in  overwhelm- 
ing numbers,  were  in  his  rear,  and  in  fact  all 
round  him.  Only  a  resolute  dash  could  possibly 
have  saved  him ;  even  that  might  have  failed  ; 
there  was,  however,  still  a  chance.  But  Mack 
was  not  the  man  to  take  the  risk,  and  after  a  few 
days  of  vacillation  he  surrendered,  on  the  lOth 
of  October,  with  30,000  men. 

Following  up  this  striking  success  without  an 
instant's  hesitation,  and  driving  before  him  the 
fragments  of  the  Austrian  army  and  the  van  of 
the  Russian  contingent,  which  had  just  begun  to 
enter  Bavaria,  Napoleon  entered  Vienna  with- 
out serious  opposition  on  the  13th  of  November. 
Here  he  offered  peace,  stipulating  only  for  the 
cession  of  the  Tyrol  to  his  ally  Bavaria  and  of 
Venice  to  his  new  Kingdom  of  Italy ;  but  the 
Emperor  Francis  refused.  Large  reinforcements 
of  Russian  troops  had  arrived.  The  allied  ar- 
mies retired  into  Moravia,  in  the  neighborhood 
of  Brunn,  some  seventy  or  eighty  miles  north  of 
Vienna.  Thither  Napoleon  followed  them.  He 
was  in  a  situation  of  considerable  peril.  The 
detachments  which  must  always  be  made  in  an 
invasion  to  cover  and  protect  the  communica- 
tions are  necessarily  very  large.  He  had  opened 
the  campaign  with  six  corps  and  the  Guard ;  he 
had  with  him  here  but  four  corps  and  the  Guard. 
The  army   had  been    marched   without  mercy; 


NAPOLEON   IN  GERMANY.  113 

the  ranks  were  much  thinned ;  the  French  were 
doubtless  outnumbered.  Defeat  would  have  been 
most  disastrous,  for  Napoleon  was  in  the  heart 
of  a  hostile  country.  Moreover,  Prussia,  alarmed 
at  the  success  of  his  invasion  of  Germany,  was 
preparing  to  take  up  arms ;  her  ambassador  had 
arrived  in  the  French  camp  bearing  the  ultima- 
tum of  his  government ;  the  cabinet  of  Berlin 
fully  expected  war.  They  were  counting  con- 
fidently upon  sending  a  strong  Prussian  army 
upon  the  exposed  communications  of  the  French, 
and  compelling  an  instant  and  disastrous  retreat. 
But  Napoleon  was  not  a  man  easily  frightened. 
He  had  no  notion  of  leaving  his  prey,  now  that 
it  was  practically  within  his  grasp.  He  preserved 
perfect  presence  of  mind.  He  refused  even  to 
talk  with  the  Prussian  envoy,  and  packed  him 
off  summarily  to  Vienna.  He  then  coolly  waited 
to  see  what  the  military  genius  of  the  two  Em- 
perors in  front  of  him  would  devise  in  the  way 
of  an  offensive  movement  against  him,  for  at 
that  comparatively  early  period  in  the  wars  of 
the  Empire  it  was  generally  possible  for  Napo- 
leon to  calculate  upon  some  stupendous  blunder 
in  the  conduct  of  his  adversaries.  The  allied 
armies  were  occupying  loosely  a  long  line  of 
heights  lying  to  the  west  of  the  village  of  Aus- 
terlitz.  Their  line  faced  the  west.  Napoleon 
confronted  them.  His  base  of  operations  in  his 
movement  into  Moravia  had  necessarily  been 
Vienna,  but  he  had  now  with  great  judgment 


114  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

shifted  it  to  the  west,  and  had  made  his  ar- 
rangements, in  case  of  retreat,  to  fall  back  into 
Bohemia.  Of  this  the  enemy  were  ignorant. 
Their  plan  was  to  seize  the  Vienna  road,  turning 
the  French  right,  and  thus  to  force  them  into  a 
region  where  they  could  procure  neither  supplies 
nor  reinforcements.  This  scheme  Napoleon,  who 
was  always  indefatigable  in  personally  watching 
the  movements  of  the  enemy,  and  spent  the  best 
part  of  the  day  of  the  1st  of  December  on  the 
picket  line,  to  see  for  himself  what  Avas  going  on, 
penetrated  without  difficulty.  It  was  precisely 
what  he  would  have  had  them  do.  In  his  ex- 
posed situation  he  was  naturally  desirous  to 
avoid  such  a  perilous  and  doubtful  enterprise  as 
that  of  attempting  to  drive  his  antagonists  by 
main  force  from  the  strong  positions  they  held 
on  the  heights  of  Pratzen.  But  it  was  quite  an- 
other thing  if  they  should  voluntarily  abandon 
the  heights.  Therefore,  when  on  the  morning 
of  the  famous  2d  of  December  the  sun  of  Aus- 
terlitz  arose.  Napoleon  quietly  waited  until  he 
saw  the  stronof  Russian  columns  leaving;  the 
heights  in  his  immediate  front  and  marching  off 
to  turn  his  right ;  he  prepared  his  counterstroke 
by  strongly  reinforcing  his  own  centre  ;  when  he 
judged  that  the  key-point  of  the  enemy's  posi- 
tion, the  heights,  had  been  sufficiently  denuded 
of  troops,  he  gave  the  word  to  Soult  to  advance ; 
and  in  a  few  hours  the  Austrian  and  Russian 
army   was    completely   broken    to    pieces.     The 


BATTLE  OF  AUSTERLITZ. 

December  2nd.  1805. 

Scale  of  Miles 


-Blasoivitz 


I. 


^eu  Kausnitz  J3v^ 


Stawikowitz 


French, 

Frencli  'Headquarters, 


Allies,  ■ 

Allied  Headquarters,         ^ 


NAPOLEON  IN  GERMANY.  115 

allied  right  and  reserve  fought  hard,  but  the 
French  had  always  a  superiority  of  force  at  the 
point  of  contact.  In  vain  the  Russian  Guards 
displayed  heroic  courage ;  in  vain  did  the  young 
Czar  animate  his  men  by  fearlessly  exposing 
himself :  the  French  made  good  and  maintained 
their  advantage ;  until  finally,  the  allied  right 
and  centre  being  routed.  Napoleon  was  able  to 
surround  and  almost  to  destroy  their  separated 
left-wing,  and  complete  the  success  of  the  day. 

Napoleon,  it  is  said,  was  more  proud  of  this 
battle  than  of  any  he  ever  fought.  It  certainly 
was  a  most  decisive  victory.  Never  was  an  army 
better  handled  than  was  the  French  army  on 
this  memorable  field.  Not  only  was  Napoleon 
then  in  the  zenith  of  his  physical  and  mental 
strength,  but  his  lieutenants  were  men  of  first- 
rate  capacity.  Soult,  Davout,  Lannes,  Murat, 
were  among  his  ablest  officers.  Bernadotte,  to 
be  sure,  was  not  their  equal,  but  he  was  a  good 
soldier.  Then  the  army  was  probably  the  best 
that  in  all  his  long  career  he  ever  handled.  It 
was  an  army  that  had  at  Boulogne  received  spe- 
cial instruction,  and  had  imbibed  a  strong  esprit 
de  corps.  It  was  nearly  all  composed  of  French 
troops ;  and  there  are  certainly  great  advantages 
in  a  homogeneous  force.  The  army  which  he 
had  at  Jena  was  perhaps  as  formidable,  but  that 
which  fought  at  Wagram  was  by  no  means  as 
good  an  army  as  that  which  he  had  at  Auster- 
Utz;    it   was  made  up   from   detachments   from 


116  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

other  armies,  got  together  in  haste  to  repel  the 
unexpected  invasion  which  Austria  undertook  in 
1809.  At  Borodino  his  troops,  especially  his 
cavalry,  were  a  good  deal  worn  Avith  long  march- 
ing:. At  Waterloo  he  did  not  have  with  him 
corps  commanders  of  the  exceptional  capacity  of 
Lannes  and  Davout.  But  though  at  Austerlitz 
he  was  fortunate  in  the  ability  of  his  lieutenants 
and  in  the  discipline  and  morale  of  his  troops, 
it  was  the  enormous  blunder  of  his  antagonists 
that  enabled  him  to  win  such  a  crushing  vic- 
tory over  them.  Had  a  cool,  sagacious,  military 
head  like  the  Duke  of  Wellington's  directed  the 
Austrian  and  Russian  movements,  such  a  defeat 
could  not  have  been  inflicted  upon  the  allies. 
Their  true  policy  was  to  play  a  waiting  game. 
The  necessity  which  obliged  Napoleon  to  strike 
a  blow  quickly,  if  he  would  prevent  the  armed 
intervention  of  Prussia,  would  have  forced  him 
probably  either  to  attack  his  enemy  in  position, 
or  else  to  undertake  a  difficult  campaign  of  ma- 
noeuvres, having  for  its  object  to  compel  them  to 
attack  him.  In  either  case  a  good  general  ought 
to  have  been  able  to  make  a  respectable  stand, 
even  against  Napoleon,  hampered  as  he  was  by  his 
situation  in  the  midst  of  a  hostile  country.  And 
nothing  but  a  decisive  victory,  it  must  be  recol- 
lected, would  have  answered  Napoleon's  needs. 
A  drawn  battle  like  Eylau,  or  a  doubtful  success 
like  Borodino,  accompanied,  as  such  a  struggle 
must  always  be,  with  great  loss  of  life  and  great 


NAPOLEON  IN   GERMANY.  117 

expenditure  of  ammunition,  would  certainly  have 
necessitated  his  retreat.  In  such  an  event  Prus- 
sia, who  was  waiting  her  opportunity,  would 
without  douht  have  declared  war  on  the  instant ; 
and  to  say  the  least  of  it,  it  would  have  required 
all  the  unrivalled  genius  of  the  French  Emperor 
to  withdraw  his  army  and  garrisons  from  the 
Austrian  dominions  without  suffering  very  seri- 
ous loss.  Of  all  this  Napoleon  was  perfectly 
cognizant ;  but,  in  pursuance  of  his  usual  haz- 
ardous policy,  he  chose  to  take  these  risks  in  the 
hope  of  winning  a  decisive  success  by  the  mis- 
takes of  his  foes.  And  he  certainly  succeeded 
this  time.  But,  as  we  shall  see  before  finishing 
our  study,  he  was  not  always  so  fortunate. 

Austria  was  now  obliged  to  accept  the  terms 
which  a  few  weeks  before  she  had  rejected.  The 
Tyrol  was  ceded  to  Bavaria,  and  Venice  to  the 
Kingdom  of  Italy.  No  serious  complaint  can 
be  made  of  these  conditions.  Venice  had  been 
in  Austrian  hands  for  only  eight  years,  and  all 
the  interests  and  political  fortunes  of  its  popula- 
tion attracted  it  to  the  new  Kingdom  of  Italy. 
Here,  then,  was,  as  every  one  will  admit,  an  un- 
questionable benefit  conferred  on  the  Italians. 
As  for  the  Tyrol,  it  was  annexed  to  Bavaria 
mainly  on  account  of  its  strategical  importance 
in  the  event  of  another  war.  It  is  true  that  the 
population  were  attached  to  the  House  of  Haps- 
burg,  and  that  the  annexation  to  Bavaria  was 
unpopular  with  them.    StiU,  such  cessions  of  ter- 


118  THE   FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

ritory  as  the  result  of  an  unsuccessful  war  were 
common  enough  then,  and  have  been  tolerably 
common  since.  There  seems  to  have  been  noth- 
mg  specially  remarkable  about  this  one.  Austria 
had  begun  the  war  by  the  unprovoked  invasion 
of  Bavaria ;  it  was  not  on  the  whole  very  harsh 
that  she  should  be  compelled  to  end  the  war 
by  ceding  her  frontier  province  to  her  injured 
neighbor.  The  principal  question  for  us  in  con- 
sidering these  changes  and  annexations  is  not 
whether  they  are  in  our  eyes  justifiable  or  not : 
to  arrive  at  any  decision  on  that  question,  we 
shall  have  first  to  determine  from  what  stand- 
point we  ought  to  view  them,  whether  from  the 
standpoint  of  the  Austrian  and  Russian  and 
Prussian  and  French  statesmen  of  that  day, — 
for  they  all  viewed  such  matters  pretty  much  in 
the  same  way ;  they  all  of  them,  Alexander,  Napo- 
leon, Thugut,  Haugwitz,  held  stoutly  to  the  old 
course  of  adding  whatever,  according  to  the  cus- 
toms of  civilized  warfare,  they  could  add  to  their 
respective  countries,  —  or  from  the  standjjoint 
of  abstract  political  morality ;  we  shall  never 
make  much  headway  in  determining  that  ques- 
tion, and  shall,  if  we  undertake  the  task,  very 
likely  end  in  condemning  all  the  continental  pol- 
iticians of  the  period  and  their  doings.  The 
only  question  that  it  is  worth  while  for  us  to 
consider  is  this  :  What  was  the  result,  in  each 
particular  case,  of  the  annexation?  Was  it  a 
change  in   the  direction  of  progress  and  good 


NAPOLEON  IN  GERMANY.  119 

government,  or  in  the  direction  of  the  preserva- 
tion of  ancient  systems  of  oppression,  inequahty, 
and  intolerance  ?  In  determining  this  qnestion, 
we  can  have  facts  to  aid  us  in  ahnost  every  case. 
If,  on  the  contrary,  we  take  up  the  other,  we  be- 
come mere  casuists,  undertaking  to  decide  ques- 
tions of  conscience  for  other  people,  long  since 
dead  and  buried,  and  who  had  different  stand- 
ards of  right  and  wrong  on  such  matters  from 
any  that  commend  themselves  to  our  minds  to- 
day. This  is  an  unprofitable  and  a  hopeless  task. 
What  we  want  to  do  is  to  understand,  if  we  can, 
the  real  nature  of  the  great  political  changes 
which  took  place  in  the  Napoleonic  period. 

Looking  now  from  this  point  of  view  at  the  re- 
sult of  the  war,  the  events  of  which  I  have  just 
sketched,  we  can  all,  I  think,  agree  that  it  was  a 
gain  for  European  progress  that  it  ended  in  the 
triumph  of  Napoleon  and  not  in  the  triumph  of 
the  allies ;  that  it  added  the  Italian  territory  of 
Venice  to  the  new  Kingdom  of  Italy ;  that  by 
increasing;  the  streng-th  of  the  western  states  of 
Germany,  it  added  to  the  stability  of  the  liberal 
institutions  they  had,  under  the  lead  of  France, 
recently  adopted ;  that  it  did  not  end  in  subject- 
ing Italy  and  western  Germany  to  the  domination 
of  Austria  and  Russia,  and  in  the  reintroduction 
of  the  abuses  which  Napoleon  had  swept  away. 
For,  let  me  add  (and  I  assure  you  it  is  not  an 
unnecessary  reminder),  as  nearly  all  wars  end  in 
the  triumph  of  one  party  or  the  other,  we  must. 


120  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

in  considering  these  continual  conflicts  of  the 
Napoleonic  era,  always  keep  in  mind  what  would 
have  been  the  consequences  if  his  antagonists 
had  beatea  him.  On  which  side  in  these  wars, 
on  the  whole,  do  we  find  the  interests  of  human 
progress,  of  liberal,  modern,  equal,  and  just  gov- 
ernment? That  is  the  question  throughout  our 
whole  examination  of  the  history  of  these  times. 
On  his  return  from  Austria,  Napoleon,  in  the 
spring  and  summer  of  1806,  carried  out  his  fa- 
vorite project  for  the  consolidation  of  the  French 
predominance,  as  opposed  to  the  Austrian  pre- 
dominance, in  southwestern  Germany.  He  es- 
tablished the  Confederation  of  the  Rhine,  of 
which  Bavaria,  WUrtemberg,  and  Baden  were  the 
principal  members,  and  to  which  nearly  all  the 
lesser  states  of  soulfcern  Germany  gave  in  their 
adhesion.  In  all  these  communities  the  new 
system  of  things  was  introduced  to  a  greater  or 
less  exten ; ;  the  general  principles  of  the  Code, 
if  not  tho  Code  itself,  became  the  fundamental 
law ;  equal  rights,  universal  toleration,  no  ex- 
emptions or  privileges,  a  free  career  for  every 
man,  took  the  place  of  oppressive  restrictions,  of 
antiquated  institutions,  of  unjust  and  unequal 
privileges.  Napoleon  was  styled  the  Protector 
of  the  Confederation ;  and  it  was  definitely 
agreed  what  should  be  the  contingent  furnished 
by  each  state  in  time  of  war.  By  this  masterly 
scheme  the  new  order  of  things  in  western  Ger- 
many received  a  definite  political  constitution. 


NAPOLEON  IN   GERMANY.  121 

The  Peace  of  Presburg  had  not  inckided  Rus- 
sia, between  which  power  and  France  war  still 
existed.  England,  also,  secure  in  her  insular 
position,  jealous,  with  her  old  national  jealousy, 
of  the  aggrandizement  of  her  ancient  rival, 
wholly  out  of  sympathy  with  the  new  liberal 
movement  on  the  continent,  equally  ignorant  and 
careless  of  the  real  needs  of  the  masses  of  the 
people  in  France,  Italy,  and  Germany,  viewing 
the  whole  conflict  as  the  work  of  an  aggressive 
democracy  led  by  a  successful  military  usurper,^ 
cHnging  wdth  aristocratic  and  invincible  prejudice 
to  her  determination  to  restore  the  old  social 
order  of  things,  and  reestablish  at  any  cost  the 
former  balance  of  power,  continued  the  war.  If 
we  would  understand  the  course  taken  by  Eng- 
land during  these  wars  of  thF  French  Revolution 
and  the  Empire,  we  have  only  to  recall  her  atti- 
tude during  the  late  civil  war  in  this  country. 
Notwithstanding  her  professed  abhorrence  of 
slavery,  her  sympathies  were  plainly  with  the 
States  that  were  fighting  for  slavery.  Why  was 
this?  Because  by  its  characteristic  features 
Southern  society  was  allied  to  the  aristocratic 
element  in  EngUsh  society.  Because  the  South 
was  fighting  a  pure  democracy,  and  the  victory 
of  that  democracy  in  America  would  give  a  great 
impulse  to  the  democratic  cause  everywhere. 
Lastly,  England  preferred  that  there  should  be 
two  nations  in  North  America  in  place  of  ona 

1  See  Appendix  III. 


122  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

Hence  she  assumed  the  rightfuhiess  of  secession  ; 
she  pretended  to  beheve  that  the  North  was 
fighting  for  mere  lust  of  dominion  ;  she  chose  to 
ignore  the  question  of  slavery,  and  prated  about 
the  tariff ;  and  her  philanthropic  lamentations 
about  the  devastations  and  bloodshed  of  a  war 
that  she  wanted  to  see  terminated  by  the  rec- 
ognition of  the  Southern  Confederacy  could  be 
heard  across  the  Atlantic.  Sixty  years  before, 
had  such  a  struo-o-le  broken  out  in  the  United 
States,  no  one  can  doubt  that  she  would  have 
openly  taken  part  against  the  great  Northern 
democracy.  It  is,  therefore,  I  submit,  not  so 
very  difficult  for  us  Americans  to  discern  the 
real  causes  which  actuated  England  in  her  fierce 
and  persistent  struggle  against  the  French  Re- 
public and  the  Emi^ire.  We  can  tell  how  likely 
it  is  that  she  should  have  taken  any  sympathetic 
and  intelligent  interest  in  the  welfare  and  for- 
tunes of  the  populations  of  the  continent,  since 
we  know  how  incapable  she  was  of  comprehend- 
ing the  great  political  crisis  in  the  history  of  her 
own  child.  We  can  put  the  proper  value  on 
English  denunciations  of  the  ambition  of  Napo- 
leon, and  on  English  diatribes  on  the  miseries 
caused  by  his  wars,  because  we  know  how  in  re- 
cent times  England  has  chosen  to  mistake  the 
real  nature  of  our  o-reat  conflict,  and  to  ig-nore 
the  necessity  which  we  were  under  of  carrying 
it  through  at  any  cost,  however  tremendous. 
Returning  now  to  our  narrative.     Mr.  Pitt, 


NAPOLEON  IN   GERMANY.  123 

then  Prime  Minister,  had  got  up  the  coaUtion  of 
1805.  England  had  furnished  Russia  and  Aus- 
tria with  a  great  part  of  the  money  which  had 
been  so  uselessly  expended  in  the  recent  disas- 
trous campaign.  She  had  also  tried  her  best  to 
induce  Prussia  to  join  the  allies,  and  throw  her 
sword  into  the  scale  against  Napoleon. 

But  in  this  she  had  not  succeeded.  It  was 
not  that  Prussia  was  not  at  bottom  as  hostile  to 
Napoleon  and  his  doings  as  were  Russia  and 
Austria.  Her  symjDathies  could  not  but  be  with 
the  conservative  side,  so  far  as  the  lines  of  the 
European  conflict  were  draAvn  on  general  princi- 
ples of  social  and  political  policy.  The  intensely 
aristocratic  constitution  of  her  army  was  suffi- 
cient of  itself  to  determine  her  preferences. 
Still,  she  was  probably  not  displeased  at  witness- 
ing the  repeated  humiliations  of  her  ancient 
rival,  Austria.  And  she  was  not  without  hopes 
that  her  abstention  from  the  coalition  might  be 
rewarded  with  a  considerable  accession  of  terri- 
tory. 

The  net  result  of  these  opposing  forces  was  a 
timid,  unstatesmanlike,  and  dishonorable  course 
of  action.  While  the  kino;  and  some  of  his  ad- 
visers  were  favorable  to  the  maintenance  of 
friendship  with  France,  the  military  and  aristo- 
cratic party  were  bitterly  hostile  to  it.  The 
crossing  by  some  of  Bernadotte's  troops  of  two 
of  the  outlying  territories  of  Prussia,  in  the 
movement  upon  Ulm,  though  a  mere  temporary 


124  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

matter,  gave,  as  indeed  it  well  might,  serious 
cause  of  offence  at  Berlin.  It  was,  of  course, 
promptly  apologized  for,  but  it  nevertheless  gave 
a  great  impulse  to  the  war  party.  The  Czar 
Alexander  besought  the  king  to  join  the  coali- 
tion, and  finally  a  treaty  of  alliance,  offensive 
and  defensive,  was  signed  between  the  two  pow- 
ers. Hence  the  despatch  to  the  French  camp 
before  Austerlitz  of  the  Prussian  envoy,  Haug- 
wdtz,  with  an  ulthnatum  which  it  was  supposed 
Napoleon  would  at  once  reject.  But  if  Napoleon 
ever  saw  it,  it  was  not  until  after  the  battle  of 
Austerlitz.  In  fact,  it  is  questionable  whether  it 
ever  was  presented  in  due  form  ;  certainly  it 
never  was  insisted  on,  Haugwitz,  doubtless,  feel- 
ing very  clear  in  his  mind  that  it  was  no  time 
now  for  ultimatums  of  any  sort.  The  two  pow- 
ers patched  up  a  new  arrangement,  and  seemed 
to  be  better  friends  than  ever.  Hanover  was  to 
go  to  Prussia  ;  the  territories  which  Bernadotte 
had  crossed  were  to  o-o  to  Bavaria. 

But  the  breach  had  gone  too  far  to  be 
healed  ;  or,  to  speak  more  definitely,  the  contin- 
ued inaction  of  Prussia  greatly  irritated  the  war 
party,  which  was  equally  opposed  to  Napoleon's 
system  and  to  his  growing  predominance  in  Ger- 
many, and  which  was  also  eager  to  try  the  result 
of  an  encounter  between  the  army  of  the  Great 
Frederic  and  the  veterans  of  Austerlitz  and  Ma- 
rengo. There  was  no  real  casics  belli  ;  but  there 
was   an    irrepressible    feeling    of   irritation    and 


NAPOLEON  IN   GERMANY.  125 

alarm  felt  at  the  growth  of  French  influence 
in  Germany.  The  formation  of  the  Confedera- 
tion of  the  Rhine,  the  introduction  into  these 
German  states  of  the  democratic  ideas  of  the 
French  Revolution,  the  abolition  of  the  powers 
and  privileges  and  exemptions  of  the  nobility, 
awakened  in  the  minds  of  the  military  aristoc- 
racy of  Prussia  and  her  immediate  neighbors  and 
dependants,  Brunswick  and  Hesse  particularly, 
sentiments  of  the  bitterest  hostility.  Then, 
there  was  no  state  in  Europe  more  martial  than 
Prussia.  She  had  won  her  position  among  the 
nations  by  her  eminence  in  war.  She  had  been, 
as  it  were,  born  and  bred  in  camps.  She  had  re- 
cently had  in  the  Great  Frederic  a  king  who  was 
confessedly  the  best  general  of  liis  day.  The 
veteran  ofi&cers  of  the  Seven  Years  War  still  re- 
viewed her  battalions.  She  had  counted  France 
as  her  foe  in  the  time  of  her  direst  extremity, 
but  she  was  able  to  point  to  Rossbach  as  one  of 
her  proudest  days.  Her  army  had  always  been 
sedulously  cared  for.  Its  manoeuvres  were  as 
perfect  and  its  drill  as  exact  as  in  the  days  of 
the  exercises  at  Potsdam  before  the  great  king  ; 
but  they  were  also  the  same  manoeuvres  and  the 
same  drill.  Prussia  had  forgotten  that  the 
world  moves ;  that  even  in  war  something  is 
gained  by  experience  under  new  and  enterpris- 
ing leaders.  And  she  forgot  also  that  it  was  not 
a  man  of  the  stamp  of  Marshal  Soubise  with 
whom  she  would  now  have  to  deal. 


126  THE   FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

These  feelings  of  jealousy  and  hostility  over- 
came in  the  end  every  prudential  consideration. 
On  the  1st  of  October,  1806,  Prussia  declared 
war.  The  Duke  of  Brunswick  commanded  the 
army.  He  had  been  a  general  of  some  mark  in 
the  Seven  Years  War,  but  now  he  was  upwards 
of  seventy  years  of  age.  The  other  leading  ofiB.- 
cers.  Prince  Hohenlohe  and  General  MoUendorf, 
were  also  too  old  and  infirm  for  the  labors  and 
duties  of  an  active  campaign.  The  army  was  in 
fact  full  of  superannuated  officers,  although  con- 
taining, of  course,  many  of  the  younger  nobility. 
The  troops  were  of  excellent  material,  but  their 
tactics  were  antiquated. 

The  Duke  of  Brunswick  favored  taking-  the 
offensive.  Occupying  Saxony,  and  obtaining  a 
reinforcement  of  Saxon  troops,  his  plan  was  to 
move  westwardly  through  Jena,  Erfurth,  and 
Eisenach  until  he  had  passed  the  westerly  ex- 
tremity of  the  Thuringian  Forest,  and  then, 
turning  to  the  south,  to  strike  the  communica- 
tions of  the  French  army,  which  was  massing  in 
the  northern  part  of  Bavaria,  near  Bamberg. 
Apart  from  the  temerity  of  adopting  such  a  pro- 
ject when  opposed  to  such  an  adversary  as  Na- 
poleon, which  should  have  been  a  sufficient  ob- 
jection to  it,  there  was  no  time  to  carry  it  into 
effect.  Before  they  were  well  on  their  way,  Na- 
poleon was  upon  them.  Pushing  his  troops  over 
the  Saale,  he  planted  himself  upon  their  commu- 
nications Avitli  Saxony.     The  forward  movement 


NAPOLEON  IN  GERMANY.  127 

of  the  Prussian  army  was  at  once  arrested  ;  at 
first  it  was  resolved  to  concentrate  on  Weimar, 
and  fight ;  finally  it  was  decided  to  retreat  upon 
Mag'deburg.  But  these  hesitations  took  time, 
while  Napoleon  did  not  lose  an  hour.  Sending 
Davout  and  Bernadotte  still  farther  to  the  north 
to  seize  the  enemy's  depots  of  supplies,  and 
block  their  retreat  into  Saxony,  he,  with  the 
main  body,  consisting  of  the  corps  of  Ney,  Soult, 
and  Lannes,  a  portion  of  the  cavalry  of  Murat, 
and  the  Imperial  Guard,  came  up  with  the  Prus- 
sians in  force  on  the  13th  of  October.  The 
Emperor  supposed  that  he  had  before  him  the 
whole  Prussian  army ;  but  in  fact  it  was  not 
more  than  half  of  it,  under  Prince  Hohenlohe. 
This  force  was  acting  as  a  rear  guard,  the  main 
body  ha^dng  retired  some  miles  to  the  north. 
To  divide  their  army  when  about  to  fight  Napo- 
leon was  a  blunder  indeed,  and  dearly  did  they 
pay  for  it.  In  the  battle  of  Jena,  fought  on  the 
14th,  the  Prussians  had  no  chance  whatever. 
Outnumbered  through  their  own  folly,  outma- 
noeuvred by  the  superior  skill  of  their  antagonists, 
opposed  to  troops  inured  to  war  and  led  by  the 
best  generals  of  the  day,  there  was  nothing  to  do 
but  to  stand  up  and  fight  like  soldiers,  and  ac- 
cept their  fate.  And  fight  they  did,  with  great 
resolution  and  obstinacy,  though  to  no  purpose. 
The  same  day,  a  few  miles  further  to  the  north, 
at  Auerstadt,  Davout,  who  had  been  sent  to 
threaten  the  Prussian  communications,  encoun- 


128  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

tered  their  main  body,  led  by  the  Duke  of 
Brunswick,  accompanied  by  the  king  in  person. 
He  was,  of  course,  at  once  attacked.  But  Da- 
vout  was  one  of  the  ablest  of  Napoleon's  mar- 
shals, and  was  moreover  a  man  of  great  firmness. 
He  took  up  a  strong  position,  and  held  it  with 
unyielding  obstinacy  all  day  long.  In  vain  did 
the  magnificent  Prussian  cavalry  throw  them- 
selves upon  the  French  squares  ;  their  efforts 
were  as  useless  as  those  of  the  French  cavalry 
against  the  English  squares  at  Waterloo.  The 
king,  sword  in  hand,  again  and  again  led  the 
troops  in  person  ;  the  Duke  of  Brunswick  was 
mortally  wounded ;  MoUendorf,  Schmettau, 
Wartensleben,  and  other  officers  of  rank  were 
wounded  at  the  head  of  their  men.  But  Da- 
vout  held  his  own,  and  finally,  at  the  close  of 
the  afternoon,  the  arrival  of  his  last  division 
enabled  him  to  take  the  offensive,  and  put  his 
enemy  to  rout.  For  his  services  on  this  memo- 
rable day,  Davout  was  made  Duke  of  Auerstadt, 
and  to  him  was  accorded  the  honor  of  entering 
Berlin  before  the  Emperor  himself. 

On  this  fatal  lith  of  October,  1806,  the 
military  power  of  Prussia  was  destroyed.  The 
French  went  from  city  to  city  and  from  fortress 
to  fortress,  only  to  receive  surrenders.  On  the 
25th  Davout  entered  Berlin.  In  three  weeks 
nearly  all  the  fortresses  in  Prussia  proper  had 
surrendered ;  and  the  French  had  advanced  to 
the  Oder.     Before  winter  set  in,  the   King  of 


NAPOLEON  IN  GERMANY.  129 

Prussia  had  retired  to  Konigsberg,  at  the  east- 
erly extremity  of  his  kingdom,  and  Napoleon 
was  at  Warsaw,  near  which  city  he  established 
his  army  in  winter  quarters. 

Of  the  operations  in  Poland  and  East  Prussia 
during  the  winter  and  early  summer,  I  have  no 
time  to  speak.  In  the  Russians,  Napoleon  found 
an  obstinate  and  enterprising  foe.  At  Eylau  on 
the  7th  of  February,  1807,  he  came  very  near 
suffering  defeat.  But  his  presence  of  mind,  clear 
head,  and  unshaken  firmness  carried  him  through, 
and  he  gained  the  day.  Finally,  after  several 
bloody  and  useless  encounters,  the  Russian  gen- 
eral, Benningsen,  made  one  of  those  egregious 
tactical  blunders,  on  which,  as  I  have  before  re- 
marked. Napoleon  could  generally  calculate  in 
the  first  half  of  his  career,  and  at  Friedland,  on 
the  14th  of  June,  1807,  the  Russian  army  was 
practically  destroyed.  Hopeless  now  of  accom- 
plishing anything  more  for  his  ally,  the  King  o£ 
Prussia,  to  whom  out  of  all  his  kingdom  a  mere 
remnant  now  remained,  —  Koniofsbero"  havino" 
fallen  as  the  result  of  the  battle  of  Friedland,  — 
the  Czar  came  to  terms.  The  famous  interview 
on  the  raft  in  the  Niemen  took  place  at  Tilsit  on 
the  25th  of  June,  1807,  between  the  two  Emper- 
ors, and  a  general  peace  was  concluded  on  the 
7th  of  July. 


LECTURE  IV. 

TILSIT    TO    MOSCOW. 

The  Peace  of  Tilsit  restored  to  Prussia  most 
of  her  own  proper  territories.  She  even  retained 
Silesia,  which,  sixty  years  before,  the  Great 
Frederic  had  wrested  by  main  force  from  the 
Empress  Maria  Theresa.  But  she  was  compelled 
to  relinquish  her  last  ill-gotten  acquisitions. 
Warsaw,  Posen,  and  the  surrounding  territories 
were  formed  into  a  new  state  called  the  Grand 
Duchy  of  Warsaw,  of  which  the  King  of  Saxony 
was  made  the  head.  Into  this  country,  lying  be- 
tween the  three  great  military  and  reactionary 
monarchies,  the  French  Emperor  introduced  his 
new  regime  of  equal  laws  and  equal  status.  The 
Grand  Duchy  of  Warsaw  was  thus  an  outpost  of 
the  new  system. 

The  most  important  result  of  the  war  was  the 
creation, out  of  Brunswick,  Hanover,  Hesse,  and 
some  other  of  the  lesser  states  of  northern  Ger- 
many, of  a  new  kingdom,  to  which  Napoleon 
gave  the  name  of  WestphaHa,  and  over  which 
he  placed  his  youngest  brother,  Jerome. 

Into  these  communities,  full  as  they  could  be 


0^1 


TILSIT   TO  MOSCOW.  131 


of  an  the  vexatious  and  oppressive  features  of 
feudal  right  and  military  officialism,  Napoleon 
introduced  the  humane,  enlightened,  just,  and 
equal  laws  emhodied  in  the  Code.  Never  was 
there  a  country  more  in  need  of  them.  They 
brought  comfort  and  hope  to  the  hovel  of  the 
peasant.  They  enlisted  the  untitled  middle 
classes  in  support  of  the  first  government  they 
had  ever  known  that  had  condescended  to  recog- 
nize their  existence.  True,  there  was  in  the  con- 
stitution of  Westphalia  but  small  provision  for 
popular  representation.  To  our  eyes,  —  in  fact 
to  any  eyes,  —  the  frame  of  government  looks 
very  autocratic.  But  it  was  not  the  monarchical 
feature  that  gave  this  constitution  its  distinctive 
character.  It  was  no  innovation  in  that  part  of 
the  world  to  concentrate  all  power  in  the  hands 
of  the  head  of  the  state.  To  this,  and  to  the 
most  arbitrary  exercise  of  that  power,  the  Hes- 
sians and  the  Brunswickers,  at  least,  were  well 
accustomed.  It  was  barely  thirty  years  since  the 
predecessors  of  some  of  these  very  princes  whose 
states  were  mero-ed  in  the  new  kinofdom  had 
actually  sold  the  military  services  of  their  sub- 
jects, and  had  defrayed  the  expenses  of  their 
petty  courts  with  the  money  which  England 
gladly  paid  for  the  assistance  which  their  sol- 
diers rendered  in  fiohtinsf  her  battles  on  the 
Hudson  and  in  the  Carolinas.  There  was  noth- 
ing in  the  monarchical  provisions  of  the  new 
constitution  calculated  to  give  offence  to  any- 


132  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON.  .^ 

body.  But  the  abolition  of  all  the  pecuniary 
and  other  exemptions  of  the  privileged  classes, 
the  extinction  of  all  their  vested  rights  to  labor, 
service,  tolls  and  charges  on  land,  and  the  intro- 
duction of  a  system  of  equal  legal  rights  for  all 
persons,  were  certain  to  awaken  indignation  and 
opposition.  It  was  to  these  features  in  the  con- 
stitution, therefore,  that  Napoleon  gave  the  most 
attention,  because  they  would  make  the  differ- 
ence between  Westphalia  and  her  Prussian  and 
Austrian  neighbors,  and  would,  when  thoroughly 
accepted  by  the  people,  attach  Westphalia  to  the 
cause  of  the  new  order  of  things. 

Hence  we  find  him  writino-  to  his  brother  to 

o 

follow  the  constitution  faithfully,  and  calling  his 
attention  to  its  characteristic  pro^^sions.  "  What 
the  German  peoples  desire  with  impatience," 
says  the  Emperor,  "  is  that  individuals  who  are 
not  noble  and  who  have  talents  shall  have  an 
equal  right  to  your  consideration  and  to  public 
employment  "  with  those  who  are  of  noble  birth  ; 
"  that  every  sort  of  servitude  and  of  intermediate 
obligations  between  the  sovereign  and  the  lowest 
class  in  the  people  should  be  entirely  abolished. 
The  benefits  of  the  Code  Napoleon,"  he  goes 
on  to  say,  "  the  publicity  of  legal  procedure,  the 
establishment  of  the  jury  system,  will  be  the  dis- 
tinctive characteristics  of  your  monarchy.  And 
to  tell  you  my  whole  mind  on  this  matter,  I 
count  more  on  the  effect  of  these  benefits,  for 
the   extension  and  strengthening  of  your  king* 


TILSIT   TO  MOSCOW.  133 

dom,  than  upon  the  result  of  the  greatest  victo- 
ries. Your  people  ought  to  enjoy  a  liberty,  an 
equality,  a  well-being,  unknown  to  the  German 
peoples.  .  .  .  This  kind  of  government  will  be  a 
barrier  separating  you  from  Prussia  more  power- 
ful than  the  Elbe,  than  fortresses,  than  the  pro- 
tection of  France.  What  people  would  wish  to 
return  to  the  arbitrary  government  of  Prussia, 
when  it  has  tasted  the  benefits  of  a  wise  and 
liberal  administration  ?  The  peoples  of  Ger- 
many, France,  Italy,  Spain,  desire  equality,  and 
demand  that  liberal  ideas  should  prevail.  ...  Be 
a  constitutional  king." 

In  this  remarkable  letter,  Napoleon  gives  us 
not  only  his  ideas  of  the  political  needs  of  the 
continental  nations,  but  also  his  general  view  of 
the  state  of  Europe.  He  recognizes  that  what 
the  people  of  the  continent  needed  at  that  time 
was  not  seZ/*-government,  of  which  they  were 
then  wholly  incapable,  but  better  government,  — 
equal  rights  and  an  enlightened  policy  on  the 
part  of  their  rulers :  and  his  language  leads  us 
to  infer  that  he  considered  the  whole  west  of 
Europe  as  united  in  a  desire  to  obtain  these  ad- 
vantages. It  is  plain,  also,  that  he  anticipates 
that  these  newly  emancipated  nations  will  have 
to  defend  their  rights  against  their  reactionary 
neighbors,  and  will  need  all  the  help  that  natu- 
ral barriers,  strong  fortresses,  the  protection  of 
France,  and,  above  all,  a  union  of  opinion  among 
then-  own  people,  can  give  them.     What  he  evi- 


134  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

deiitly  was  aiming  at,  was  the  union  of  the 
Avestern  states  of  Europe,  so  soon  as  they  should 
all  have  received  the  new  system,  in  a  common 
league  to  defend  their  liberties  against  the  hos- 
tile coalitions  which  would  certainly  be  formed 
against  them.  You  observe,  that  he  does  not 
say  that  the  populations  of  Prussia  and  Austria 
demand  equality  and  liberal  ideas  in  government. 
By  Germany  he  means  the  German  states,  which, 
outside  of  these  two  powers,  then  comprised 
much  the  larger  part  of  the  German  people. 
Here  he  had  determined  to  draw  the  line.  At- 
taching these  populations  to  the  new  system, 
welding  them  together  in  a  confederation  under 
the  protection  of  France,  he  hoped  that  in  time 
this  part  of  Europe  at  any  rate  would  be  able  to 
maintain  itself,  and  to  retain  the  great  social, 
legal,  and  political  reforms  introduced  by  the 
French  Revolution. 

It  has  probably  not  escaped  your  observation 
that  the  Emperor  included  Italy  and  Spain  in 
his  enumeration  of  the  countries  that  demanded 
the  new  system.  Of  Italy  he  had  the  right  to 
speak  thus,  although  it  certainly  was  more  true 
of  the  northern  than  of  the  southern  portion  of 
the  peninsula.  Still,  at  this  time  his  brother 
Joseph  was  King  of  Naples,  was  introducing  the 
Code,  and  was  governing  in  a  wise,  humane,  and 
liberal  spirit,  to  the  great  satisfaction  of  the  bet- 
ter classes  of  the  population.  But  Spain  was 
still  under  the  rule  of  the  Bourbons,  and  a  most 


TILSIT  TO  MOSCOW.  135 

corrupt  J  inefficient,  bigoted  rule   it  'was.     How 
came  he,  then,  to  inckide  Spain? 

There  is  no  need  that  I  should  take  up  your 
time  with  any  account  of  the  highhanded  and 
entirely  indefensible  course  pursued  by  Napoleon 
towards  the  king  and  royal  family  of  Spain.  No 
justification  for  his  acts  in  seizing  from  their 
weak  grasp  the  country  which  they  governed,  or 
rather  misgoverned,  can  be  made.  Let  us  frank- 
ly admit  this.  There  was  an  excuse,  and  a  good 
one,  for  his  banishment  of  the  Neapolitan  Bour- 
bons. Ferdinand  of  Naples  had  deliberately 
made  a  treaty  by  which  he  had  agreed  to  pre- 
serve neutrality  in  the  war  which  England,  Rus- 
sia, and  Austria  had  in  1805  undertaken  against 
Napoleon.  Yet  when  the  French  cause  seemed 
to  be  compromised  by  the  perilous  advance  of  the 
Emperor  beyond  Vienna,  the  court  of  Naples  put 
its  army  on  a  war  footing,  and  received  Avitli  open 
arms  an  English  and  Russian  force.  There  was 
not  a  shadow  of  cause  for  this  hostile  course ;  it 
was  wholly  unprovoked.  It  was  taken  six  months 
after  a  solemn  promise  to  keep  the  peace.  The 
breach  of  faith  was  the  more  heinous  in  that  the 
time  selected  was  when  Napoleon  was  supposed 
to  be  in  great  straits.  Lastly,  there  was  the 
additional  aggravation,  that  it  was  not  an  ordi- 
nary war  between  the  two  countries  that  Naples 
undertook  to  wage,  but  it  was  a  combination, 
a  coalition,  against  France,  into  which  she  so 
eagerly  and  so  dishonorably  entered.     Naturally, 


136  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

Napoleon  felt  that  this  was  practically  joining  a 
conspiracy,  and  that  with  a  monarch  capable  of 
this  no  terms  could  be  made.  Hence  he  deter- 
mined once  for  all  to  bring  Naples  permanently 
into  the  French  alliance.  He  made  his  brother 
Joseph  king ;  liberal  institutions  were  intro- 
duced ;  the  new  i^egirrie  met  with  the  counte- 
nance and  support  of  the  middle  classes  and  of 
many  of  the  educated  and  influential  nobility. 

No  excuses  of  this  kind  can  be  made  for 
Napoleon's  course  towards  Spain.  True,  the 
Spanish  ministry  had  taken  a  hasty  step  which 
looked  like  a  rupture  with  France,  at  a  moment 
when  Napoleon  was  fighting  in  the  marshes  of 
East  Prussia  and  Poland  in  1807.  This  step 
was,  however,  soon  retracted,  and  the  two  coun- 
tries were  apparently  on  terms  of  amity  again. 
There  was,  I  repeat,  no  justification  for  Napo- 
leon's dethronement  of  the  Spanish  Bourbons. 

Yet  it  will  hardly  be  pretended  that  Napoleon 
had  any  hostile  intentions  towards  the  Spanish 
people.  He  undoubtedly  supposed  that,  like  the 
populations  of  Italy  and  of  most  parts  of  west- 
ern Germany,  the  population  of  the  Spanish  pe- 
ninsula were  ready  for  the  great  reforms  in  gov- 
ernment in  which  France  had  led  the  way,  and 
in  which  Holland,  western  Germany,  and  Italy 
were  then  cheerfully  and  hopefully  marching,  and 
that  the  better  and  more  enlightened  part  of  the 
Spanish  people  would  be  thankful  to  see  a  liberal, 
intelligent,  and   conscientious  man   like  Joseph 


TILSIT  TO  MOSCOW.  137 

take  the  place  of  the  bigoted  and  profligate 
Charles  IV.  In  Napoleon's  view,  all  the  states 
of  western  Europe  were  ripe  for  political  and 
legal  and  social  progress ;  and  he  thought  that 
what  had  proved  so  successful  in  Italy  and  Ger- 
many would  be  cordially  welcomed  by  Spain. 

In  this  he  was  mistaken.  There  was,  it  is 
true,  a  certain  amount  of  liberal  sentiment  in 
Spain ;  but  there  was  also  a  deep  feeling  of  pa- 
triotism, which  the  course  pursued  by  the  French 
Emperor  towards  the  Spanish  king  and  his  son 
aroused  into  fierce  action.  Not  only  were  the 
masses  of  the  people  averse  to  any  changes,  not 
only  were  the  clergy  zealous  beyond  measure  in 
inciting  the  population  against  France  and  her 
revolutionary  policy,  but  even  the  liberal  party 
in  Spain,  though  some  men  of  influence  in  it 
declared  for  King  Joseph,  as  a  rule  preferred 
the  continuance  of  the  existing  wretched  and 
despotic  form  of  government  to  any  improve- 
ments which  could  be  introduced  under  the  rule 
of  a  foreigner.  On  this  Napoleon  had  not  cal- 
culated. His  arrano-ements  had  been  made  on 
the  supposition  that  the  experiences  of  Lom- 
bardy  and  Naples  would  be  repeated  in  Spain. 
Accordingly,  the  new  king  made  a  royal  progress 
in  great  state  to  Madrid,  but  he  soon  had  to 
abandon  it ;  and  although  he  afterwards  returned 
under  the  escort  of  his  powerful  brother,  his 
reio-n  was  one  of  incessant  war.  There  were 
periods  when  he  ruled,  with  the  aid  of  French 


138  THE   FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

armies,  over  the  greater  portion  of  the  country. 
Had  it  not  been  for  the  assistance  of  the  English 
there  can  be  no  reason  to  doubt  that  the  resist- 
ance to  him  would  have  died  out  in  time,  and 
there  can  be  equally  little  reason  to  doubt  •  that 
Joseph  would  have  made  the  Spaniards  a  good 
king.  He  brought  with  him  the  principles  of  a 
far  better  government  than  any  to  which  they 
had  ever  been  accustomed.  But  he  found  in 
Spain  a  national  or  patriotic  feeling,  pure  and 
simple,  which  resisted  all  his  efforts  at  concilia- 
tion. This  the  previous  experience  of  the  French 
on  the  Rhine  and  in  Italy  had  not  prepared  them 
for.  They  had  forgotten  that  while  the  relig- 
ious wars  and  the  wars  ensuing  on  the  disinte- 
gration of  the  German  Empire  had  rendered  a 
strictly  patriotic  feeling  out  of  the  question  in 
Germany,  that  while  Italy  had  been  from  time 
immemorial  parcelled  out  between  the  kings  of 
France  and  Spain  and  the  Emperor  of  Germany, 
Spain  had  maintained  her  integrity,  and  that  she 
had  a  great  and  glorious  history. 

Napoleon,  in  fact,  made  a  capital  error  in 
attempting  to  force  a  liberal  government  upon 
Spain.  But  there  can  be  no  sort  of  question 
that  it  would  have  been  a  great  benefit  to  Spain 
had  Joseph  been  able  to  establish  himself.  As 
between  him  and  the  principles  of  government 
which  he  represented,  and  Ferdinand  and  the 
principles  to  which  he  was  committed,  we  cannot 
for  a  moment  hesitate  in  expressing  our  prefer* 


TILSIT   TO  MOSCOW.  139 

ence  for  the  former.  Under  Joseph,  in  1808,  the 
Inquisition  was  abolished ;  under  Ferdinand,  in 
1814,  it  was  restored.  The  opposition  to  Joseph 
was  not  an  intelligent  opposition  ;  it  was  a  move- 
ment of  an  unreasoning,  and,  so  to  speak,  bigoted 
patriotism.  The  Spanish  people  in  fighting  the 
French  were  not  resisting  tyranny ;  nor  were 
they  fightmg  against  the  imposition  of  a  for- 
eign yoke,  for  there  was  no  intention  of  conquer- 
ing Spain  and  annexing  the  country  to  France. 
They  were  opposing  the  advent  of  a  new  regime 
which  brought,  or  would,  if  they  had  suffered  it 
to  enter,  have  brought  to  them  in  its  train  incal- 
culable benefits,  —  would  have  made  them  a  freer, 
more  intelligent,  more  liberal  people,  have  placed 
them  in  Hue  with  the  advanced  nations  of  Eu- 
rope, and  would  have  saved  them  innumerable 
revolutions,  atrocities,  executions.  But  they  shut 
their  eyes  to  all  this,  because  the  way  in  which 
their  legitimate  king  had  been  treated  deeply 
wounded  their  national  pride.  With  the  aid  of 
the  English  they  finally  expelled  the  intruder, 
and  succeeded  in  restoring  Spain  to  nearly  the 
same  condition  of  degradation,  poverty,  misrule, 
and  intolerance  in  which  she  was  before  the 
French  invasion.  The  liberal  element,  unable 
to  rally  around  the  reactionary  government,  was 
soon  forced  into  revolution,  and  the  history  of 
Spain  since  1814  has  been  a  bloody  story  of  in- 
surrection and  civil  war. 

Undoubtedly,  the  true  course  for  Napoleon  to 


140  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEOX. 

take  when  he  discovered  the  almost  universal  op- 
position in  Spain  to  his  projects  was  to  have  at 
once  abandoned  them.  This,  however,  it  needs 
hardly  be  said,  was  a  eom-se  totally  opposed  to 
his  disposition.  Having  undertaken  to  put  his 
brother  on  the  throne  of  Spain,  he  did  not  pro- 
pose to  desist  because  of  the  opposition  of  the 
people.  He  attributed  this  opposition  entirely 
to  the  prejudices  of  the  ignorant  masses  and  the 
bigotry  of  the  clergy.  He  refused  to  give  suffi- 
cient weight  to  the  fact  that  the  French  policy 
had  few  supporters,  even  among  the  liberals.  He 
thought  he  could  crush  all  resistance  by  main 
force. 

Accordingly,  he  invaded  Spain  at  the  head  of 
a  large  army,  dispersed  the  wi-etehed  troops 
which  the  Spanish  junta  had  set  on  foot,  forced 
Su-  John  Moore,  who  at  the  head  of  a  small 
Enghsh  army  had  penetrated  a  long  distance 
into  the  interior,  to  beat  a  precipitate  retreat  to 
the  coast,  and  departed  for  Paris,  lea\-ino'  the 
conduct  of  further  operations  to  Joseph  and  the 
marshals.  His  stay  was,  in  truth,  too  short  to 
do  the  work  thoroughly,  and,  what  is  more,  he 
left  no  one  behind  him  who  was  competent  to 
finish  the  task.  But  the  attitude  of  Austria 
alarmed  him. 

The  fact  was,  that  Austi-ia  beUeved  that  Napo- 
leon had  got  himself  so  entangled  ^^-ith  the  af- 
fairs of  Spain  that  she  might  reasonably  hope  to 
recover  some  of  her  lost  possessions,  and  some 


TILSIT  TO  MOSCOW.  141 

part,  at  any  rate,  of  her  former  ascendancy  in 
Germany.  There  was  absokitely  no  pretence  of 
France  havino;  oiven  her  any  new  orouiid  of 
quarrel.  To  the  mind  of  the  Austrian  states- 
man of  that  day  there  was  a  standing  cause  of 
war  with  Napoleon,  No  matter  what  had  been 
agreed  in  treaties,  if  there  was  an  unexpectedly 
good  chance,  it  was  always  the  thing  to  attack 
him  again.  You  will  find  this  view  defended  by 
Scott,  F}4fe,  and  others,  on  the  ground  of  NajJO- 
leon's  aun  being  the  conquest  of  Europe.  But 
the  facts  at  that  time  certainly  warranted  no 
such  conclusion.  Take  Austria,  for  iustance.  Of 
the  three  wars  m  which  she  had  been  euo-ao-ed 
suice  the  outbreak  of  the  French  Revolution,  she 
had  beofun  each  one  of  them  herself.  In  not 
one  of  the  three  does  any  historian,  to  whatever 
political  belief  he  may  hold,  seriously  claim  that 
France  was  the  aggressor.  To  be  sure,  m  every 
one  of  these  three  wars  Austria  had  been  badly 
beaten,  and  there  is  no  question  that  Napoleon 
improved  to  the  full  the  advantages  he  gained. 
But  in  this  there  was  nothing  to  complain  of.  I 
see  no  reason  whatever  to  doubt  that  Austria 
might  have  had  peace  just  as  long  as  she  was 
willing  to  keep  the  peace. 

Nevertheless  she  determmed  on  war,  and,  as 
usual,  began  it  by  invading  Bavaria.  The  cam- 
paign of  1809  is  an  interesting  one.  Every  one 
has  heard  how  for  the  first  time  in  his  expenence 
Napoleon  found  that  the  Austrians  had  effected 


142  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

a  concentration  of  their  forces,  when  his  own 
were  as  yet  separated.  The  Emperor  arrived  at 
the  front  not  a  moment  too  soon.  He  applied 
himself  ^^'ith  wonderful  activity  to  the  problem 
before  him.  For  six  days  he  did  not  take  off 
his  clothes.  Fortunately  he  had  in  Massena, 
Davout,  and  Lannes  three  first-rate  lieutenants^ 
With  their  cordial,  intelligent,  and  vigorous  help 
the  army  was  soon  got  together,  and  in  the 
brilliant  actions  of  Abensbero-  and  Eckmiihl  the 
troops  of  the  Archduke  Charles  were  beaten  and 
dispersed,  and  the  way  again  opened  to  Vienna. 
The  French  entered  Vienna  without  further 
serious  opposition  about  the  middle  of  May. 
The  Austrian  army,  now  again  concentrated,  lay 
on  the  northern  side  of  the  Danube,  just  below 
the  city.  It  numbered  somewhere  about  80,000 
men.  Napoleon  was  naturally  anxious  to  lose  no 
time ;  he  desired  to  preserve  the  moral  effect  of 
his  success  hitherto.  Accordingly,  although  his 
army  was  considerably  weakened  by  the  casual- 
ties of  the  campaign  as  well  as  by  the  troops  re- 
quired to  guard  his  communications,  he  deter- 
mined to  cross  the  Danube  at  once  and  attack 
the  Archduke  Charles.  At  the  point  selected, 
the  channel  of  the  river  is  separated  by  the  large 
island  of  Lobau  into  two  branches,  of  which  the 
southern  is  much  the  wider.  In  less  than  a 
week  from  his  arrival  at  Vienna  this  large  arm 
of  the  Danube  was  bridged,  and  troops  were 
on    smaller   bridges  thrown  from    the 


TILSIT   TO  MOSCOW.  143 

island  to  the  north  bank.  But  these  arrange- 
ments being  hastily  made  were  imperfectly  made, 
and,  besides,  the  river  rose,  and  the  increased 
velocity  of  its  current  imperilled  the  bridges, 
particularly  that  crossing  the  larger  or  southern 
branch.  Nevertheless,  Massena  crossed  with  his 
corps,  occupied  the  villages  of  Aspern  and  Ess- 
ling,  and  was  immediately  attacked.  He  how- 
ever maintained  himself  during  the  day  (May 
21st).  The  corps  of  Lannes  and  some  other 
troops  crossed  during  the  night,  raising  the  total 
of  the  French  force  on  the  north  side  of  the 
Danube  to  about  55,000  men.  With  these 
troops  Napoleon  managed  to  hold  his  own  dur- 
ing the  greater  part  of  the  22d  against  the' 
repeated  and  desperate  assaults  which  the  Arch- 
duke directed  against  him.  Such  was  the  pre- 
carious state  of  the  bridges  that  he  was  unable 
to  get  Davout's  corps  and  the  other  troops 
across  the  river ;  all  he  could  do  was  to  maintain 
his  position  against  largely  superior  numbers, 
and  wait  till  he  could  be  reinforced.  But  in  the 
afternoon  came  the  terrible  news  that  the  great 
bridge  across  the  main  channel  had  given  way 
entirely,  leaving  Davout  with  his  corps  and  some 
other  troops  on  the  south  side  of  the  river.  It 
required  all  Napoleon's  firmness  and  coolness, 
and  all  the  splendid  fighting  capacity  of  Massena 
and  Lannes,  to  bring  the  force  they  had  in  hand 
in  good  order  back  to  the  island  of  Lobau.  But 
they  did  it.     The  Emperor's  nerve  never  failed 


144  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

him  for  an  instant;  nothing  could  exceed  the 
skill  and  bravery  of  his  corps  commanders.  One 
of  them,  Launes,  was  mortally  wounded  at  the 
close  of  the  action ;  the  other,  Massena,  for  his 
conspicuous  services  on  this  terrible  day,  was 
created  Prince  of  Essling. 

Once  on  the  island  of  Lobau,  the  army  was 
for  the  time  being  safe.  But  it  was  a  very  seri- 
ous question  whether  to  remain  there  or  to  re- 
cross  to  the  south  side  of  the  river.  Napoleon 
decided  to  stay  where  he  was.  He  ordered  new 
and  solid  bridges  to  be  built.  He  surveyed  the 
whole  field,  and  made  up  his  mind  that  the  game 
was  not  half  played  out.  He  sent  for  reinforce- 
ments from  France,  Italy,  Germany.  Fortune 
favored  his  plans.  The  Viceroy  Eugene  beat 
the  Austrians  in  the  Tyrol,  and  made  his  way  to 
the  Danube  at  the  head  of  a  powerful  corps. 
Marmont  and  Bernadotte  joined  him,  each  with 
strong  reinforcements.  His  army  numbered  on 
the  1st  of  July  no  less  than  150,000  men. 

On  the  4th  of  July  pontoon  bridges  were  laid 
from  the  island  to  the  north  bank,  and  on  the 
5th  the  whole  army  was  over  in  excellent  condi- 
tion for  an  army  made  up  of  such  heterogeneous 
elements,  the  main  body  fully  rested  by  the  en- 
forced stay  on  the  island,  encouraged  by  heavy 
reinforcements,  and  expecting  a  striking  and  de- 
cisive victory. 

It  is  always  within  the  power  of  a  good  gen- 
eral who  commands  an  army  equal  or  nearly  equal 


TILSIT  TO  MOSCOW.  145 

to  that  of  his  opjoonent,  to  prevent  anything 
like  a  catastrophe.  Rosbach,  Leiithen,  Auster- 
litz,  Jena,  Friedland,  Waterloo,  Sedan,  are  all  in- 
stances of  great  mistakes  made  by  the  defeated 
commanders  or  their  subordinates.  Even  Napo- 
leon himself  could  not  score  a  decisive  victory 
where  no  serious  errors  were  made  by  the  oppo- 
site side.  And  it  always  ought  to  be  possible 
for  a  thoroughly  trained  and  educated  officer  to 
avoid  serious  errors.  Such  an  officer  may  of 
course  lose  battles ;  but  he  never  loses  a  battle 
without  inflicting  heavy  loss  on  his  antagonist, 
and  without  retiring  his  own  troops  in  respecta- 
ble order. 

The  Archduke  Charles  at  Wagram,  while  he 
certainly  failed  to  manoeuvre  his  army  as  skil- 
fully as  did  Napoleon,  counted,  and  had  appar- 
ently a  right  to  count,  on  the  reinforcement  of 
his  left  wing  by  a  corps  commanded  by  his 
brother,  the  Archduke  John,  which  did  not  come 
up  in  time.  Doubtless  some  allowance  should 
be  made  for  this.  Still,  as  it  was,  the  Archduke 
fought  a  very  good  fight,  and  pushed  the  French 
hard.     The  main  battle  was  on  the  6th  of  July. 

The  immense  plain  of  the  Marchfeld,  on  which 
the  great  battle  of  Wagram  was  fought,  is  as 
flat  a  tract  of  country  as  can  be  found  anywhere, 
and  is  as  well  suited  for  the  manoeuvring  of 
300,000  men  as  can  be  imagined.  It  is  not 
surprising,  therefore,  to  find  that  marching  and 
manoeuvring  are    the   characteristic   features   of 

10 


146  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

this  battle.  Of  course,  there  was  a  great  deal  of 
hard  fiorhtina"  too  :  the  Austrians  were  animated 
by  the  recollection  of  Aspern,  two  months  before ; 
the  French  felt  that  with  a  fair  field  and  no 
bridges  that  could  be  broken,  and  with  Napoleon 
commanding,  they  must  win.  Still,  their  army, 
though  large,  was  not  a  homogeneous  army,  and 
contained  troops  of  various  degrees  of  merit. 

Napoleon,  as  usual  with  him,  took  the  offen- 
sive. He  found  the  Archduke  occupying  gener- 
ally a  semicircular  position,  extending  from  Neu- 
siedel  on  the  east  to  a  point  not  very  far  from 
the  Danube  on  the  west.  Pushing  his  corps 
forward,  he  attacked  their  left  and  centre  simul- 
taneously. But  neither  operation  was  at  first 
successful.  The  Austrian  left  defended  Neu- 
siedel  against  Davout,  and  their  centre  held 
Wagram  and  Aderklaa  against  the  repeated  ef- 
forts of  Bernadotte  and  Massena.  Then  the 
Archduke  took  the  offensive  himself.  Bringing 
up  his  right  wing,  he  pushed  it  straight  towards 
the  island  of  Lobau  and  the  bridg-es  across  the 
Danube.  Massena's  efforts  ao;ainst  the  Austrian 
centre  ceased  at  once,  and  he  hurried  off  his  corps 
as  fast  as  it  could  go  towards  the  threatened 
point.  This  attack  had  apparently  not  been 
foreseen,  by  Napoleon.  With  his  customary  skill, 
Massena  disposed  his  troops,  holding  the  most 
essential  point  in  the  line,  stubbornly  defend- 
ing himself,  on  the  whole  losing  ground,  but 
still  preserving  the  communications  of  the  army. 


TILSIT  TO  MOSCOW.  147 

His  departure  had  left  a  gap  in  the  French 
line  of  battle,  which  it  took  time  to  fill,  and  time 
was  precious,  for  it  was  evident  that  the  French 
left  Avas  outnumbered  and  that  the  bridges  were 
in  serious  danger.  But  Napoleon  had  watched 
the  operation  with  his  accustomed  clearness  of 
vision.  He  saw  that  his  best,  if  not  his  only 
chance  of  a  victory  lay  in  piercing  the  Austrian 
centre,  in  which  case  their  right  wing,  which  was ' 
fio'htino;  Massena,  would  be  forced  to  retire  at 
once.  He  saw  the  risk  he  ran  of  the  contest 
at  Essling  ending  in  Massena's  defeat,  but  he 
knew  Massena,  and  he  decided  to  take  that  risk. 
He  again  pushed  forward  Davout,  supported  by 
Oudinot,  against  the  Austrian  left  at  Neusiedel. 
He  himself  organized  the  attack  on  the  centre, 
between  Aderklaa  and  Slissenbrunn.  It  was  to 
consist  of  two  divisions  of  infantry  under  the  com- 
mand of  Macdonald,  the  cavalry  of  the  Guard 
and  the  cuirassiers  of  Nansouty,  and  an  enormous 
artillery  force  of  a  hundred  pieces  of  cannon,  of 
w  hich  sixty,  belonged  to  the  Guard.  It  was  on 
the  fire  of  this  tremendous  battery  that  Napo- 
leon chiefly  counted  to  do  the  work.  He  had 
himself  been  an  artillery  officer,  and  in  all  his 
battles  he  placed  great  reliance  on  that  arm  of 
the  service.  In  this  case,  the  guns,  supported 
by  the  infantry,  were  advanced  to  within  a  short 
distance  of  the  hostile  lines,  under  a  very  heavy 
fire.  When  they  opened,  the  effect  was  terri- 
ble.   The  Austrians  were  evidently  much  shaken. 


148  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

But  Macdonald's  divisions  had  suffered  so  much 
in  the  advance  that  it  was  impossible  for  them 
to  complete  the  work  of  defeat.  Seeing  this, 
the  Emperor  at  once  orders  in  the  cavalry,  to- 
gether with  two  fresh  divisions  of  infantry.  By 
this  attack  the  enemy's  lines  are  soon  broken. 
The  Archduke  Charles  has  no  available  reserves 
at  this  point.  His  right  wing  is  engaged  a  long 
way  off  near  Essling ;  he  perceives  by  the  reced- 
ing smoke  that  his  left  wing  has  been  compelled 
to  retreat ;  in  fact,  part  of  the  troops  of  Davout 
and  Oudinot  are  rapidly  coming  up  from  Neu- 
siedel  to  aid  in  the  attack  on  the  Austrian  cen- 
tre ;  there  is  nothing  left  but  to  retire.  This 
is  effected  in  good  order,  the  French  being  too 
much  exhausted  to  pursue  their  antagonists  vig- 
orously. 

The  Austrians  in  this  battle  fought  with  great 
courage  and  obstinacy.  And  they  were  well 
handled  by  the  Archduke  Charles,  although  he 
probably  erred  in  strengthening  his  right  at  the 
expense  of  his  centre.  But  if  Massena  could  be 
routed,  it  was  certain  that  the  French  must  re- 
tire ;  and  the  Archduke  thought  that  his  centre 
could  hold  its  own  until  the  superior  force  which 
he  had  directed  against  Massena  should  have 
gained  the  bridges.  In  this  he  was  mistaken,  to 
b(!  sure  ;  but  it  was  a  very  close  thing.  Had  the 
Ardididve  John  come  up  as  it  was  expected  he 
would,  and  had  the  Austrian  left  wing,  thus 
strengthened,  been  able   not  only  to  repel  the 


BATTLE  OF  WAGRAM 


July  6th.  1809. 

Scale  of  Miles. 


Frencli 

Frencli  Headquarters, 


■  Austrians, 

•^         Austrian    Headquarters. 


WJRrS,    BUFFALO. 


TILSIT  TO  MOSCOW.  149 

attacks  of  Davoiit  and  Oudinot  against  Neusie- 
clel,  but  to  take  the  offensive,  Napoleon's  attack 
on  the  Austrian  centre  must  have  failed  utterly. 
And  if,  with  or  without  the  aid  of  the  Archduke, 
the  left  could  have  maintained  itself,  Napoleon's 
attack  on  the  centre  would  have  failed  of  half 
its  effect.  It  may  be  remarked,  also,  that  the 
Austrian  rigj-ht  in  its  movement  asrainst  Massena 
ran  no  such  risk  of  being  cut  off  as  did  the  Rus- 
sian left  wing  at  Austerlitz ;  its  line  of  retreat 
was  always  open.  On  the  other  hand,  there  is 
no  reason  to  suppose  that  Napoleon's  skill  was 
not  what  it  had  been  at  Friedland  or  Austerlitz ; 
the  whole  cause  of  the  difference  between  the 
victory  of  Wagram  and  those  just  mentioned  lay 
in  the  fact  that  the  Austrian  commander  here 
made  no  blunders.  Napoleon  was  here  pitted 
against  a  master  in  the  art  military.  He  won,  it 
is  true,  but  that  was  all.  He  did  not  destroy 
or  entirely  cripple  his  antagonist. 

Nevertheless,  the  battle  of  Wagram  was  a  ter- 
rible blow  to  Austria,  although  she  still  had  pow- 
erful armies  in  the  field.  It  discouraged  her. 
Negotiations  began,  and  peace  was  at  last  con- 
cluded at  Vienna.  Its  terms  were  perhaps  not 
unreasonable,  taking  into  account  that  Austria 
had  begun  the  war  without  any  provocation.  To 
the  Grand  Duchy  of  Warsaw,  which  in  the  be- 
ginning of  the  war  had  been  invaded  by  an 
Austrian  army,  was  added  a  large  part  of  Aus- 
trian Poland.     Bavaria  likewise  received  a  large 


150  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

accession  of  territory.  The  Illyrian  provinces  of 
Austria  on  the  Adriatic  were  ceded  to  France, 
thus  shutting  out  Austria  from  the  sea.  The 
Emphe  of  Napoleon  reached  at  this  moment  its 
largest  extension  of  territory. 

Let  us  pause  a  moment  here  in  our  narrative. 
The  continent,  with  the  exception  of  Spain,  was 
at  peace.  In  that  unhappy  country,  war,  and 
war  of  the  worst  kind,  was  still  rag-inof.  The 
Spanish  liberals  had,  as  a  rule,  j)referred  to  stand 
by  their  old  monarchy,  intolerant,  oppressive,  and 
mefficient  as  it  was,  rather  than  accept  the  only 
mode  by  which  Spain  could  receive  the  benefits 
of  the  new  system.  But  in  Italy,  Holland,  west- 
ern Germany,  aiid  Poland  a  great  improvement 
in  the  condition  of  the  middle  and  lower  classes, 
and  also  a  marked  change  in  the  notions  of  gov- 
ernment entertained  by  the  ruling  classes,  had 
been  effected,  and  was  bringing  self-respect,  hap- 
piness, prosperity,  and  a  laudable  ambition  to 
those  who,  under  the  old  order  of  things,  had  not 
only  always  been  oppressed  by  a  sense  of  legal 
and  political  inferiority,  but  had  also  grievously 
suffered  in  their  persons  and  property  from  un- 
just and  unequal  legislation.  This  change  had 
certainly  not  been  effected  without  war ;  it  had 
not  been  effected  without  a  radical  alteration  in 
the  European  "balance  of  power;"  it  had  come 
about  chiefly,  as  yow.  have  seen,  as  the  result 
of  wars  which  were  undertaken  against  France 
to  restore  the  balance  of  power,  and  to  bring 


TILSIT   TO   MOSCOW.  151 

back  the  old  order  of  things  in  government  and 
legislation.  But  it  had  not  come  about  as  the 
result  of  any  purpose  of  Napoleon's  to  extend 
his  Empire,  or  to  propagate  the  new  system  at 
the  point  of  the  bayonet.  Napoleon's  course  in 
Spain  is  undoubtedly  open  to  these  criticisms ; 
but  I  submit  that  they  cannot  fairly  be  made  in 
respect  to  his  course  with  regard  to  Italy,  west- 
ern Germany,  or  Poland.  These  countries  came 
under  his  disposition  as  the  result  of  wars  in 
which  he  was,  though  the  party  ultimately  vic- 
torious, the  party  originally  attacked. 

England  still  continued  the  war.  To  force 
her  to  make  peace  Napoleon  established  what 
was  known  as  the  Continental  System,  which  was 
simply  the  exclusion  of  English  trade  from  the 
continent,  a  measure  which,  while  it  undoubt- 
edly brought  the  English  merchants  and  manu- 
facturers to  the  brink  of  ruin,  caused  among  the 
peoples  of  the  continent  also  great  and  wide- 
spread distress.  This  was  not  so  manifest  in 
France,  where  the  various  industries  of  the  peo- 
ple enabled  them  to  dispense  to  a  great  extent 
with  English  products ;  it  was  most  severely  felt 
in  Russia,  which  depended  largely  On  English 
commerce  for  the  sale  of  her  staples. 

So  long  as  England  kept  up  the  war,  stand- 
ing ready,  as  she  always  did,  to  assist  with  her 
subsidies  any  continental  nation  that  might  de- 
sire to  join  her  in  a  new  attempt  to  break  down 
Napoleon,  —  so  long  as  Russia,  her  military  re- 


152  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

sources  undiminislied,  was  chafing  and  suffering 
under  the  system  Avhich  destroyed  her  commerce, 
—  no  one  could  feel  that  the  international  con- 
flict which  had  begun  in  1792  was  over.  Still, 
for  the  present,  at  any  rate,  the  continental  hori- 
zon was  clear ;  the  Empire  of  Napoleon  seemed 
to  be  firmly  established  and  to  be  working  well. 
The  Emperor  himself  was  untiring  in  his  labors 
for  the  improvement  of  the  condition  of  the  peo- 
ple and  the  development  of  the  resources  of  the 
country.  Every  year  added  to  the  hold  which 
the  new  system  was  acquiring  over  the  modes  of 
thought  of  the  peoples  of  Italy,  Germany,  France. 
Let  but  this  state  of  things  continue  twenty  years 
longer,  and  the  west  of  Europe  at  any  rate 
would  safely  pass  through  its  epoch  of  transi- 
tion, and  might  defy  the  worst  efforts  of  the  oli- 
garchical and  legitimist  nations  to  bring  back 
the  old  rerjime. 

But  how  much  this  possibility  of  continuing 
the  present  state  of  things  depended  on  the  life 
of  one  man  !  That  was  the  thought  which  was 
continually  arising  to  interfere  with  the  prospect 
of  stability.  Nobody  could  succeed  Napoleon. 
Whether  one  turned  towards  France,  or  looked 
across  the  border,  it  was  plain  that  on  his  death, 
unless  that  event  was  to  be  deferred  to  the  dim 
future,  there  was  certain  to  be  trouble.  Nor 
was  this  forecast  of  danger  much  mended  by  the 
establishment  of  the  Empire.  True,  the  succes* 
sion  to  the  throne  was  defined  strictly  in  the  con- 


TILSIT   TO  MOSCOW.  153 

stitiition.  The  Emperor  had,  to  be  sure,  no 
children,  but  for  this  contingency  the  constitu- 
tion had  made  provision.  His  brothers  and  their 
issue  would  in  this  event  become  in  turn  entitled. 
There  was  no  difficulty  about  the  law,  and  the 
law,  if  not  satisfactory,  could  have  been  easily 
changed.  The  trouble  lay  in  this,  that  neither 
the  Emperor's  brothers,  nor  his  stepson  Eugene, 
nor  any  of  his  marshals,  nor  any  one  else  whom 
he  might  make  the  heir  to  his  crown,  could  hope 
to  command  the  obedience  of  France,  still  less  to 
maintain  the  Empire.  Jealousy,  insubordination, 
open  hostility  were  certain  to  arise,  should  either 
one  who  was  merely  the  brother  or  stepson  of 
the  great  Emperor  assume  to  wield  his  sceptre, 
or  should  any  one  of  those  generals  who  had  sim- 
ultaneously received  the  marshal's  baton  under- 
take to  command  his  peers.  The  difficulty  lay 
in  the  very  nature  of  man.  It  seemed  as  if  there 
was  no  way  out  of  it. 

Yet  some  of  those  about  Napoleon  thought 
they  could  see  a  chance  of  escape.  If,  said  they. 
Napoleon  could  leave  his  heritage  to  a  son  of  his 
own,  he  might  die  without  anxiety.  Hundreds 
of  thousands  of  bayonets  would  protect  that  boy's 
claim  to  his  father's  throne.  His  advent  to  power 
would  clash  with  no  one's  pretensions,  would 
awaken  no  jealousies,  arouse  no  animosities. 
Child  though  he  might  be  when  some  chance 
bullet  found  its  way  to  his  father's  heart,  he  would 
possess  power,  to  him  would  be  transferred  the 


154  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

allegiance  of  the  soldiers,  the  ready  obedience  of 
the  people,  for  he  would  be  Napoleon's  son. 

There  was,  to  my  thinking,  a  good  deal  in  this 
reasoning.  It  was  sound  enough  as  far  as  it 
went.  It  would  have  been  an  exceedingly  de- 
sirable thing  for  France  if  Napoleon  could  have 
had  a  son.  It  would  have  been  far  preferable 
to  devolving  the  crown  upon  the  brothers  or  the 
marshals.  No  doubt  whatever  about  that.  But 
Napoleon  had  no  son  by  the  Empress  Josephine, 
and  was  not  likely  to  have  one.  Then,  it  was 
argued,  let  him  divorce  the  Empress  Josephine 
and  marry  another  wife.  The  good  of  the  coun- 
try demands  this  sacrifice.  Done  as  an  act  of 
public  duty,  the  divorce  would  be  justifiable. 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  point  out  the  fallacy 
of  this  reasoning.  To  those  who  have  any  re- 
gard for  the  sacredness  of  the  marriage  tie,  the 
suggestion  that  it  may  be  justifiably  broken, 
provided  the  motive  be  to  benefit  the  public,  is 
as  inadmissible  as  would  be  the  sug'Pfestion  that 
an  innocent  man  may  be  justifiably  killed,  pro- 
vided only  the  motive  be  to  benefit  the  public. 
Among  those,  however,  who  surrounded  Napo- 
leon were  many  who  took  a  very  low  view  of  the 
obligation  of  the  marriage  relation,  and  a  very 
practical  view  of  the  political  desirability  of  Na- 
poleon's having  a  son  and  heir.  For  years  they 
had  been  urging  the  divorce  of  Josephine  upon 
him,  and  for  years  he  had  resisted.  In  an  evil 
hour  he  yielded  to  the  arguments  which  were,  so 


TILSIT  TO  MOSCOW.  155 

constantly  thrust  upon  his  notice.  Josephine,  at 
his  desire,  rekictantly  gave  her  consent.  The 
whole  affair  was  managed  without  any  attempt  at 
concealment ;  the  Emperor  and  Empress  carried 
themselves  throughout  with  great  dignity  and 
propriety  of  demeanor ;  and,  to  the  honor  of  the 
French  people  be  it  said,  no  voice  was  raised  in 
slanderous  accusation  or  insinuation.  All  this 
is,  I  think,  true,  and  it  ought  to  be  remembered. 
Still,  to  divorce  man  and  wife  on  grounds  of 
state  policy  is  at  complete  variance  with  our 
ethical  notions  respecting  marriage.  We  ought, 
however,  to  remember  that  this  divorce  pro- 
ceeded from  no  unworthy  or  scandalous  grounds. 
Both  Napoleon  and  Josephine  are  entitled  to  be 
treated  with  respect  in  this  matter.  But  it  is 
impossible  to  approve  his  course. 

By  his  marriage  to  the  Austrian  Archduchess 
Maria  Louisa  and  the  subsequent  birth  of  a  son, 
Napoleon  seemed  to  have  indeed  consolidated  his 
power,  and  to  have  assured  for  France  and  for 
the  continent  a  long  period  of  peace  and  pros- 
perity. It  was  taken  for  granted  that  by  this 
union  the  alliance  of  Austria  was  rendered  cer- 
tain, and  that  the  two  powers  together  could  set- 
tle the  policy  of  Europe. 

These  happy  prognostications  were,  however, 
to  be  disappointed.  The  principal  cause  of  the 
wars  between  France  and  Austria  was  not  a 
dynastic  rivalry  between  the  Hapsburgs  and 
the  Bonapartes,  capable  of  being  terminated  by 


156  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

a  marriage  between  representatives  of  the  two 
families.  Nothing  of  the  sort.  There  were  in 
reaHty  two  causes  for  the  wars  which  had  been 
devastating  the  continent  for  the  last  eighteen 
years.  The  first  in  order  of  time  was  the  great 
social  and  political  Revolution  begun  by  France 
in  1789,  and  carried  by  her  into  the  territories 
of  her  neighbors.  At  the  ejjocli  of  which  we 
are  now  speaking,  however,  1810,  this  cause  had 
apparently  lost  much  of  its  force,  or,  perhaps,  it 
would  be  more  correct  to  say  that  the  second  of 
the  two  causes,  alarm  at  the  extension  and  grow- 
ing power  of  the  Empire  of  Napoleon,  had  to  a 
great  extent  supplanted  the  first  in  men's  minds ; 
yet  the  fundamental  differences  in  legal  and  po- 
litical sfattts  which  existed  between  the  French 
Emjiire  and  the  other  states  of  Europe  continued 
to  the  end  of  the  Napoleonic  conflict  to  be  a  most 
efficient  barrier  in  the  way  of  a  permanent 
peace,  and  a  constant  incitement  to  war.  In 
the  French  Empire  there  were  equal  rights,  no 
exemptions,  no  privileges,  no  monopoly  by  the 
nobility  of  the  honors  and  employments  of  the 
public  service.  Between  such  a  country  and 
such  nations  as  Russia,  Austria,  and  Prussia, 
where  the  general  system  of  things  was  the 
entire  opposite  of  this,  both  in  theory  and  prac- 
tice, it  was  not  possible  for  any  cordial  under- 
standing to  exist  so  soon  after  the  French  Revo- 
lution. Such  essential  differences  in  the  ideas 
of  nations  in  regard  to  the  fundamentals  of  civil- 


TILSIT   TO  MOSCOW.  157 

ization  and  government  have  again  and  again  in 
the  world's  history  been  the  cause  of  war.  Wit- 
ness, in  ancient  history,  the  Peloponnesian  war, 
—  a  contest,  by  the  way,  very  like  in  some  re- 
spects to  this  of  the  Napoleonic  era,  where  Ath- 
ens stands  for  France  and  Sparta  for  England, 
and  where,  underlying  all  the  particular  causes 
of  quarrel,  is  the  great  difference  between  Ath- 
ens and  Sparta  in  their  views  of  government. 
In  modern  times,  there  is  our  own  civil  war, 
in  which  culminated  "  the  irrepressible  conflict  " 
between  the  civilizations  of  the  slave-holding 
and  the  free  States. 

At  the  time  of  which  we  are  now  speaking, 
however,  the  second  of  the  two  causes,  alarm  at 
the  enormous  aggrandizement  of  the  Empire  of 
Napoleon,  was  certainly  more  prominent  in  men's 
minds.  So  far,  every  coalition  against  him  had 
not  only  been  defeated,  but  the  result  of  each 
defeat  had  been  to  strengthen  and  increase  his 
power.  Austria  and  Prussia  had  been  crippled. 
They  had  lost  terribly  in  men  and  money,  and 
they  had  been  obliged  to  cede  a  large  part  of 
their  territories.  Nor  was  this  all.  These  con- 
quered districts,  which  were  incorporated  into 
the  French  Empire,  by  the  very  act  of  adopting 
the  new  system  of  equal  rights,  could  not  but 
array  themselves  in  opposition  to  their  former 
political  affiliations ;  could  not  but  adopt  views 
of  government  diametrically  opposed  to  those 
held  at  St.  Petersburg,  Vienna,  Berlin ;  could  not 


168  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

but  maintain  a  close  alliance  with  France.  The 
French  Empire,  in  fact,  seemed  capable  of  over- 
powering all  its  neighbors.  It  was  no  longer 
a  question  of  driving  French  influence  out  of 
Germany,  or  of  restoring  Lombardy  and  Venice 
to  the  House  of  Austria.  The  question  was 
larger  than  this :  it  was  whether  or  not  France 
and  French  ideas  should  dominate  the  continent 
from  the  Vistula  to  the  Tagus. 

Here,  then,  were  the  two  causes  of  war,  each 
of  them  adequate  of  itself  :  first,  the  underlying 
hostility  with  which  the  states  which  adhered  to 
the  old  order  of  things  regarded  the  French 
Empire,  with  its  radically  opposite  constitution, 
so  destructive  of  those  institutions  which  to  the 
privileged  classes  in  Russia,  Austria,  Prussia,  and 
England  seemed  to  be  essential  to  the  welfare 
of  civilized  society;  and,  secondly,  the  natural 
alarm  at  the  enormous  preponderance  which 
France  had  so  recently  acquired.  It  is  plain  to 
every  student  of  history  that  here  was  an  "  irre- 
pressible conflict  "  in  regard  to  the  fundamen- 
tal notions  of  civilized  government,  which,  hav- 
ing originally  been  the  cause  of  the  coalitions 
against  France,  had  since  occasioned  such  sud- 
den, great,  and  violent  disturbances  in  the  bal- 
ance of  power  in  Europe  that  further  shocks 
were  sure  to  come. 

Accordingly,  you  will  find,  I  think,  nowhere  a 
clear  statement  of  the  causes  of  the  great  wai 
between  Russia  and  the  rest  of  the  continent  in 


TILSIT   TO  MOSCOW.  159 

1812.  There  was  no  doubt  a  mistrust  on  the 
part  of  the  Czar  of  the  Emperor's  intentions 
in  regard  to  Poland,  dating  from  the  augmen- 
tation of  the  Grand  Duchy  of  Warsaw  by  a 
part  of  Austrian  Gahcia,  which  was  provided 
for  in  the  Treaty  of  Vienna.  There  was  a 
grievance  of  Russia  regarding  the  continental 
system.  There  was  a  grievance  of  France  re- 
garding a  Russian  tariff.  There  was  the  incor- 
poration of  the  little  Duchy  of  Oldenburg  into 
the  French  Empire,  for  which  for  a  while  the 
Czar  refused  to  accept  either  apology  or  equiva- 
lent. But  these,  with  perhaps  the  exception  of 
the  Polish  question,  were  probably  all  pretexts. 
The  fact  was,  that  all  the  three  great  monarchies 
of  the  continent  only  waited  for  a  chance  to  re- 
cover their  power  and  prestige,  and  to  roll  back 
the  tide  of  modern  ideas  in  government  and  legr 
islation.  Austria  in  1809  had  no  casus  belli; 
she  had  no  grievance,  hardly  a  pretext,  but  she 
attacked  Napoleon  because  she  thought  he  was 
embarrassed  and  entangled  in  Spain.  In  like 
manner  Russia  determined  on  war  in  1810. 
With  all  convenient  speed  she  completed  her 
conquest  of  Finland.  She  sounded  public  opin- 
ion in  the  Grand  Duchy  of  Warsaw,  which  she 
greatly  coveted.  She  endeavored  to  bring  her 
war  with  Turkey  to  a  conclusion.  She  began 
the  preparation  of  formidable  armaments.  She 
communicated  her  intentions  to  the  courts  of 
Vienna  and  Berlin.     For  various  reasons,  how* 


160  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

ever,  she  could  not  get  ready  as  soon  as  she  had 
at  first  intended,  but  she  placed  a  large  part  of 
her  army  on  the  frontier.  Napoleon  likewise 
strengthened  his  force  in  the  Grand  Duchy  of 
Warsaw  and  increased  the  garrison  of  Dantzic. 
During  the  next  two  years  negotiations  went  on 
constantly  between  St.  Petersburg  and  Paris. 
Russia's  peculiar  complaint  was  this,  that  Napo- 
leon refused  to  pledge  himself  never  under  any 
circumstances  to  restore  Poland.  At  the  same 
time,  he  said  that  to  restore  Poland  was  no  part 
of  his  plans.  Whether  Russia  really  feared  the 
reestablishment  of  Poland,  or  merely  pretended 
to  do  so,  it  is  not  easy  to  say.  It  was  certainly 
of  vital  importance  to  her  to  retain  her  Polish 
provinces.  But  it  was  not  so  much  the  ques- 
tion of  retaining  what  she  had,  as  of  adding 
to  it,  that  was  at  the  bottom  of  her  military 
activity.  There  is  conclusive  evidence  of  Alex- 
ander's schemes,  concocted  when  a  nominal  ally 
and  friend  of  Napoleon,  for  conquering  and  in- 
corporating into  his  empire  the  Grand  Duchy  of 
Warsaw.*  That  Napoleon  might  have  avoided 
the  war  is  perhaps  probable  ;  but  it  is  certain 
that  Alexander  might  have  done  so.  The  latter 
seems  to  have  been  the  first  to  take  up  the  idea 
of  war ;  he  seems  to  have  regarded  a  contest  be- 
tween himself  and  Napoleon  as  inevitable.  The 
truth  was,  that  in  the  enormous  aggrandizement 
of   the  French  Empire  which  resulted  from  the 

^  See  Appendix  IV. 


TILSIT  TO  MOSCOW.  161 

defeat  of  the  Prussian  and  Russian  coalition  in 
1807,  and  of  Austria's  isolated  attack  in  1809, 
people  lost  sight  of  the  fact  that  in  neither  of 
these  wars  was  the  French  Emperor  the  aggres- 
sor. Up  to  this  time,  certainly,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  Spain,  Napoleon  cannot  be  charged  with 
having  entered  on  a  career  of  conquest.  His 
conquests  had  been  made  in  wars  begun  by  his 
enemies.  It  may  be,  as  most  people  beheve, 
that  in  1812  Napoleon  wantonly  invaded  Russia. 
The  enormous  extent  of  his  preparations  and 
the  time  occupied  in  organizing  the  army  of  in- 
vasion, certainly  support  this  theory.  Neverthe- 
less, I  think  it  on  the  whole  far  more  probable 
that  the  Russian  war  was  in  its  causes  and  ob- 
jects essentially  like  the  Prussian  war  of  1806  and 
the  Austrian  war  of  1809  ;  that  is,  that  it  was  un- 
dertaken by  Russia  in  the  hope  of  changing  the 
existing  state  of  things  in  Europe,  and  breaking 
down  the  increasing  influence  of  France.  She 
expected  to  remain  on  the  defensive,  and  to  be 
invaded.  But  she  believed  that  the  task  of  con- 
quering her  immense  and  barren  country  would 
be  an  impossible  one  even  for  the  genius  of  Na- 
poleon ;  and,  if  she  did  not  actually  entertain  the 
hope  of  some  such  catasti-ophe  happening  as 
that  which  subsequently  occurred,  yet  she  did 
expect  that  she  would  be  able  in  the  end  to 
parry  the  blows  and  to  break  the  prestige  of  the 
great  conqueror,  and  then  to  place  herself  at 
the  head  of  a  new  coalition  into  which,  as  she 
11 


162  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

well    knew,  Austria  and  Prussia  would  eagerly 
enter.     '> ' 

On  the  other  hand  Napoleon,  in  accepting  the 
challenge,  hoped  to  be  able,  as  the  result  of  the 
war,  to  reestabHsh  Poland.  It  was  only  sixteen 
years  since  the  last  partition.  The  country  was 
ripe  for  insurrection.  Already  had  the  hopes  of 
the  patriots  been  excited  by  the  establishment  of 
the  Grand  Duchy  of  Warsaw.  For  some  years 
Polish  regiments  had  served  in  the  French  ar- 
mies. The  invasion  of  Russia  was  not  like  other 
invasions.  In  his  march  to  Moscow,  Napoleon 
would  not  set  foot  on  hostile  ground,  until  he 
should  reach  the  city  of  Smolensk.  Kowno, 
Wilna,  Polotsk,  Witepsk,  Minsk,  the  whole  pop- 
ulation for  nearly  two  thirds  of  the  distance 
from  the  Prussian  frontier  to  Moscow,  were  cer- 
tain to  receive  the  French  with  open  arms.  Na- 
poleon had  a  right  to  consider  that  if  the  result 
of  the  war  should  be  to  rescue  this  unhappy 
country  from  the  grasp  of  the  Russian  Czar, 
to  reorganize  it  on  sound  and  liberal  principles 
of  government,  so  that  it  might  again  resume 
its  place  among  the  nations  of  the  earth,  man- 
kind would  not  be  likely  to  accuse  him  of  hav- 
ing committed  a  very  heinous  offence.  Such 
a  result  of  the  war  would  be,  in  fact,  a  great 
benefit  conferred  upon  the  world.  I  do  not 
think  he  went  to  war  for  this  purpose.  But 
I  have  no  question  that  he  intended  that  this 
should  be  the  outcome  of  the  struggle.     And  I 


TILSIT   TO  MOSCOW.  163 

am  free  to  say  that  I  think  it  was  a  great  mis- 
fortune for  Europe  and  especially  for  Russia, 
that  Napoleon's  enterprise  failed,  and  that  the 
cause  of  Poland  perished  in  the  snows  of  that 
terrible  winter. 

I  have  not  time  to  give  the  details  of  the  im- 
mense preparations  made  by  Napoleon  for  this  gi- 
gantic expedition.  He  recognized  fully  the  pecu- 
liar military  difficulties  of  the  task,  arising  from 
the  nature  of  the  soil  and  the  great  extent  of 
country  to  be  traversed.  His  arrangements  for 
forage  and  provisions  were  on  an  enormous  scale. 
Everything  was  done  that  human  foresight 
could  snggest  to  provide  for  the  subsistence  of 
450,000  men  in  a  country  which  could  not  be 
expected  to  furnish  anything  like  the  entire  sup- 
port needed  for  the  troops    and  their  horses. 

All  the  nations  of  the  continent  except  Tur- 
key had  their  contingents  in  the  grand  army. 
That  of  Prussia  was  to  operate  on  the  extreme 
left ;  that  of  Austria  on  the  extreme  right.  Be- 
tween these  outlying  corps,  the  Emperor  organ- 
ized three  armies.  The  left  or  northernmost 
one,  comprising  three  corps  of  infantry  and  the 
Guard,  with  three  cavalry  corps  under  Murat, 
numbering  in  all  about  225,000  men,  under  the 
Emperor  himself,  crossed  the  Niemen  at  Kowno 
on  the  23d  of  June,  1812,  and  marched  straight 
upon  Wilna,  where  it  arrived  on  the  28th. 
Here  the  city  authorities  welcomed  Napoleon  and 
presented  him  the  keys  of  the  city  in  due  form. 


164  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

The  Viceroy  Eugene,  with  two  corps,  comprising 
about  75,000  men,  crossed  the  river  at  Pilany, 
to  the  south  of  Kowno,  about  the  first  of  July, 
and  marched  also  on  Wilna.  The  Emperor's 
brother  Jerome,  with  three  corps  of  infantry 
and  one  of  cavalry,  making  altogether  a  force 
of  about  80,000  men,  crossed  the  Niemen  on  the 
30th  of  June  at  Grodno,  still  further  to  the  south. 
The  Russians  had  formed  two  principal  ar- 
mies :  the  first  or  main  army  under  Barclay 
de  Tolly,  with  its  headquarters  at  Wilna ;  the 
second  under  Prince  Bagration,  with  its  head- 
quarters at  Wolkowysk,  a  place  a  considerable 
distance  to  the  south.  The  Russian  generals 
made  the  mistake  of  underestimating  the  force 
which  the  French  Emperor  could  collect  at  such 
an  immense  distance  from  his  own  country ; 
they  supposed  that  he  would  be  able  only  to 
form  one  considerable  army.  This,  they  rightly 
judged,  would  be  directed  upon  Wilna.  Alex- 
ander had  calculated  also  on  the  neutrality  of 
Prussia  and  Austria.  Barclay  also  expected  to 
have  plenty  of  time  to  concentrate  his  main 
army,  and,  in  falling  back  to  the  interior,  to  be 
able  to  obstruct  and  delay  his  adversary.  The 
part  which  Bagration's  army  was  to  play  was  to 
operate  on  the  flank  of  Napoleon's  army,  and 
harass  its  operations.  But  the  army  under 
Jerome  directed  asfainst  Baofration's  force  was 
something  he  had  not  counted  upon  ;  and  the 
army  under  the  Viceroy,  manoeuvring,  as  it  didj 


TILSIT   TO  MOSCOW.  165 

between  the  two  Russian  armies,  not  only  pre- 
served the  flanks  of  the  two  main  French  col- 
umns from  annoyance,  but  threatened  the  move- 
ments of  both  the  Russian  armies,  and  specially 
of  the  southern  one  under  Bag-ration.  Further- 
more,  the  Emperor  marched  so  quickly  upon 
Wilna  that  Barclay  had  all  he  could  possibly  do 
to  assemble  his  own  army,  and  some  of  its 
detachments  were  even  cut  off  and  obliofed  to 
attach  themselves  to  the  second  army. 

Both  Barclay  and  Bagration,  therefore,  found 
themselves  obliged  to  fall  back  in  haste.  But  in 
Bagration's  rear  were  the  marshes  of  the  Bere- 
sina,  over  which  there  were  but  two  or  three 
practicable  roads.  To  occupy  these  and  so  cut 
the  second  Russian  army  off  from  all  possibility 
of  uniting  with  the  first  army  under  Barclay  de 
Tolly,  was  now  Napoleon's  aim.  Eugene's  force 
was,  as  we  have  seen,  unable  to  cross  the  Niemen 
simultaneously  with  the  army  commanded  by  the 
Emperor.  Napoleon  therefore  detached  from 
his  own  army  Davout,  with  a  large  force,  who 
moved  in  a  southeasterly  direction  endeavoring 
to  reach  the  important  points  in  this  region 
before  Bagration.  He  was  to  cooperate  with 
Jerome,  but  his  superiority  to  the  Emperor's 
brother  was  so  manifest  that  Napoleon  soon  gave 
him  the  command  of  Jerome's  force  in  addition 
to  his  own.  Davout  acted  with  his  usual  activ- 
ity and  military  capacity  ;  but  he  could  not  cut 
off  the  Russian  general,  who,  moving  very  rap- 


166  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

icily  by  a  large  circle  to  the  southward,  finally 
brought  up  at  Smolensk  about  the  3d  of  August. 
Meantime  the  first  Russian  army,  under  Bar- 
clay de  Tolly,  on  evacuating  Wilna,  gave  Napo- 
leon a  great  opportunity,  which  he  unaccountably 
failed  to  improve.  Previous  to  the  declaration  of 
war  the  Russian  military  authorities  had  thought 
it  wise  to  fortify  in  advance  an  entrenched 
camp  to  which  both  their  armies  could  retire, 
where,  it  was  to  be  hoped,  they  would  be  able  to 
hold  their  own  behind  regularly  constructed 
works.  They  had  selected  for  this  purpose  the 
position  of  Drissa,  a  town  lying  more  than  a 
hundred  miles  nortlieast  of  Wilna.  A  glance 
at  the  map  will  show  the  mistake  of  making 
such  a  choice  as  this.  It  is  to  the  north  of  the 
main  road  to  Smolensk,  and  its  occupation  thus 
not  only  left  that  road  open  to  the  French,  but 
enabled  them  completely  to  interpose  between 
the  two  Russian  armies.  Nevertheless  there 
Barclay  went.  He  got  there  on  the  11th  of 
July.  But  when  once  there  the  absurdity  of  the 
situation  dawned  upon  the  Russians.  In  three 
days  they  left  their  carefully  prepared  redoubts 
and  were  off  on  the  road  to  Smolensk.  Their 
movements  were  quickened  by  hearing  that  Na- 
jtoleon  was  trying  to  gain  this  road  so  as  to  be 
between  them  and  Smolensk.  Why  he  did  not 
succeed  in  doing  this,  it  is  impossible  to  say. 
No  d()ul)t  he  was  detained  at  Wilna  by  the  cares 
of  the  enormous  army  under  his  charge.      But  it 


Allies,  « 

Kussians,  ■ 
Napoleon's  Headquarters,     -^ 

Davout's                  ,,  X 

Jerome's                  „  B 

Barclay  cle  Tolly's  ,,  t 

Bagration's            »  ^ 


TILSIT   TO  MOSCOW.  167 

does  seem  that  if  Napoleon  had  manoeuvred  on 
his  arrival  at  Wilna  with  anything  like  the  ac- 
tivity and  energy  which  he  displayed  three  years 
before  in  the  opening  of  the  last  Austrian  cam- 
paign at  Abensberg  and  Eckmtihl,  he  would 
have  thrown  Barclay  back  upon  St.  Petersburg, 
if  not  upon  the  Baltic  sea. 

As  it  was,  however,  Barclay  gained  Smolensk 
before  him,  and  united  his  army  to  that  of  Prince 
Bag-ration.  The  Russian  forces  now  numbered 
some  117,000  men.  It  was  the  12th  of  Au- 
gust. The  French  columns  which  composed  the 
main  army  were  much  exhausted  and  in  great 
need  of  repose.  On  approaching  Smolensk,  Na- 
poleon halted  on  the  north  side  of  the  Dneiper 
to  give  his  soldiers  needed  rest.  Of  the  eight 
corps  which  had  crossed  the  Niemen,  three  were 
detached  and  posted  on  the  lines  of  communica- 
tion. The  remaining  five  had  suffered  greatly 
on  the  march  ;  the  Guard  had,  however,  suffered 
less  than  the  other  troops.  The  four  cavalry 
corps  had  lost  severely  in  horses  from  fatigue. 
Probably,  Najjoleon's  force  at  Smolensk,  deduc- 
tion being  made  for  these  losses,  and  for  garri- 
sons and  detachments  at  various  points  on  the 
line  of  march,  did  not  exceed  150,000  men. 

For  convenience'  sake  the  French  corps  were 
somewhat  separated  from  each  other.  The  Rus- 
sian generals  conceived  the  idea  of  attacking 
them  while  in  this  condition.  Moving  from 
Smolensk  in  a  northwesterly  direction  with  great 


168  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

circumspection,  they  simply  gave  warning  of 
their  purpose.  In  a  moment  Napoleon  united 
his  forces,  crossed  the  Dneiper,  which  here  runs 
from  east  to  west,  a  little  to  the  west  of  Smo- 
lensk, and  marched  upon  the  city,  the  principal 
part  of  which  is  situated  on  the  southern  bank 
of  the  river.  But  the  Russian  troops  who  were 
encountered  defended  themselves  obstinately  and 
showed  an  admirable  countenance ;  the  alarm 
was  sent  to  the  Russian  headquarters ;  and  be- 
fore the  attack  could  be  made  Smolensk  was 
held  by  a  force  of  a  hundred  thousand  men. 

Why  Napoleon  attacked  this  city  it  is  not  per- 
haps quite  easy  to  see.  Superior  as  the  French 
were  in  numbers,  an  occupation  in  force  of  the 
great  road  between  Smolensk  and  Moscow  might 
certainly  have  been  made,  and  the  Russian  army 
must  have  evacuated  the  town.  Probably  he 
thought  his  own  army  needed  the  encourage- 
ment of  a  successful  battle,  and  that,  if  he  com- 
pelled the  retirement  of  the  enemy  by  manoeu- 
vring, his  own  soldiers  would  lose  courage,  and 
feel  that  they  were  being  drawn  farther  and 
farther  into  an  unknown  country  without  even 
having  a  chance  to  show  in  a  fair  fight  that  they 
could  bring  the  war  to  a  sudden  and  glorious 
termination.  If  this  was  his  object,  he  certainly 
miscalculated,  for  the  action  at  Smolensk,  —  it 
can  scarcely  be  called  a  battle,  —  was  indecisive, 
though  very  bloody. 

The  night  after  the  battle  the  Russians  evacu- 


TILSIT  TO  MOSCOW.  169 

ated  the  town.  But  from  some  incompreliensi- 
ble  motive,  Barclay's  army  did  not  retire  at  once 
on  the  Moscow  road,  but  made  a  detour  to  the 
north,  leaving  the  troops  of  Bagration  to  take 
the  straight  road.  Ney  at  once  attacked  them, 
but  was  severely  handled.  Napoleon  then  or- 
dered Junot  to  move  to  Ney's  assistance,  and  if 
he  had  done  so,  a  decisive  advantage  must  have 
been  gained,  as  Barclay's  army  could  not  possi- 
bly have  joined  the  force  that  was  attacked  in 
season  to  prevent  a  disaster.  But  Junot  would 
not  stir.  The  disease  which  finally  incapacitated 
him  for  active  service,  insanity,  had  begun  to 
show  itself.  Thus  the  opportunity  offered  at 
Valoutina  was  also  lost,  and  the  united  Russian 
armies  stood  between  Napoleon  and  Moscow. 

I  have  no  doubt  that  it  was  no  part  of  the 
original  plan  of  Napoleon  to  advance  beyond 
Smolensk.  The  evidence  for  this  is  very  strong, 
and  there  is  every  reason  to  believe  it.  He 
probably  expected  to  repeat  on  a  grand  scale  the 
experience  of  1806  and  1807  in  Poland  and  East 
Prussia.  He  had  then  wintered,  and  even  ma- 
noeuvred and  fought  during  the  winter,  in  a 
country  situated  on  nearly  the  same  parallels  of 
latitude  as  the  region  in  which  he  was  now  oper- 
ating. He  saw,  therefore,  no  insurmountable  dif- 
ficulty in  passing  the  winter  of  1812  and  1813 
in  Lithuania,  a  friendly  country,  which,  during 
his  stay  at  its  capital,  Wilna,  he  had  organized  as 
a  military  department,  and  where  he  had  every 


170  THE   FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

reason  to  expect  that  the  immense  stores  which 
he  had  accumulated  in  Germany  and  which  could 
not  be  carried  in  the  wake  of  his  rapidly  march- 
ing armies,  had  now  been  safely  transported. 
He  also,  without  doubt,  had  counted  on  winning 
a  decisive  victory  before  arriving  at  Smolensk. 
This  he  had  not  succeeded  in  doing  ;  and  he 
could  not  but  recognize  among  the  generals 
and  in  the  army  generally  a  restlessness  and  an 
uneasiness  hitherto  unknown,  and  also  a  feel- 
ing of  profound  disappointment,  which  he  him- 
self could  not  help  sharing,  that  this  great  ex- 
pedition had  so  far  accomplished  so  little.  One 
great  victory  would  change  this  atmosphere  to 
one  of  confidence  and  elation.  True,  if  he  went 
beyond  Smolensk  it  must  be  to  go  to  Moscow, 
and  Moscow  is  280  miles  from  Smolensk.  And 
if  he  should  go  to  Moscow,  he  might  have  to  re- 
treat from  Moscow.  There  was  certainly  that 
chance.  On  the  other  hand,  there  was  the  Rus- 
sian army  between  him  and  the  capital,  and  he 
was  sure  that  they  would  never  give  up  the  Holy 
City  without  a  great  battle.  This  battle  he  felt 
confident  of  winningf.  He  would  be  able  to 
bring  to  the  task  a  good  army,  worn  and  tired, 
to  be  sure,  but  still  certain  to  be  alert  and  vig- 
orous on  the  day  of  trial,  lieutenants  of  great 
ability  and  experience,  and  his  own  unrivalled 
energy  and  skill.  To  oppose  this  the  Russians 
had  simply  their  obstinate  courage  to  rely  upon. 
He  knew  they  would  fight    hard,   but   he   saw 


TILSIT   TO   MOSCOW.  171 

no  reason  why  he  could  not  be  reasonably  sure 
of  beating  them,  and  thus  winning  the  prize 
of  Moscow.  Once  there,  he  expected  that  the 
Czar  woidd  treat  for  peace. 

Accordingly  he  again  set  his  army  in  motion. 
The  Russians  fell  back  before  him.  But  this 
continual  retreating  before  the  invader  had  be- 
gun to  try  even  Russian  patience  and  obedience. 
People  thought  that  Barclay  de  Tolly  and  Bagra- 
tion  had  fallen  back  far  enough.  The  original 
intention  was  that  both  the  Russian  armies 
should  unite  at  the  camp  at  Drissa,  and  there 
fight  for  the  defence  of  the  Empire.  But  Na- 
poleon, as  we  have  seen,  had  prevented  this. 
Lithuania  was  now  entirely  under  French  con- 
trol. Still,  the  separated  Russian  forces  had 
now  at  last  effected  a  junction.  The  army  was 
anxious  to  measure  SAvords  with  the  foreigner, 
who  was  now  no  lonofer  treadinp'  the  soil  of  the 
recently  acquired  Polish  province  of  Lithuania, 
but  that  of  old  Russia.  A  chang-e  was  called 
for,  and  Prince  Koutousof,  an  old  and  distin- 
guished officer,  took  command  of  the  forces  of 
Barclay  and  Bagration.  This  meant  that  Mos- 
cow should  not  be  given  up  without  a  battle. 

On  the  4th  of  September  the  French  came 
up  with  the  Russians  in  position  near  the  little 
village  of  Borodino,  on  the  banks  of  the  Moskwa. 
The  men  of  both  armies  prepared  for  a  desper- 
ate conflict :  the  French  to  fig-ht  as  men  will 
fight  in  an  unknown  and  hostile  region,  thou- 


172  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

sands  of  miles  from  home,  where  victory  is  their 
only  salvation  ;  the  Russians  to  fight  for  their 
homes  and  their  country. 

The  whole  of  the  6th  was  spent  by  Napoleon 
in  a  personal,  close,  and  careful  examination 
of  the  enemy's  lines.  They  were  strongly  en- 
trenched. Several  redoubts,  besides  other  works, 
increased  the  defensive  capacity  of  a  position 
naturally  good,  and  gave  every  chance  that 
could  be  desired  to  an  infantry  of  well-known 
steadiness  and  endurance.  It  was  clear  that 
this  was  to  be  no  Austerlitz,  no  Jena,  no  Fried- 
land.  If  the  Russians  were  to  be  driven  from 
the  field  here,  it  must  be  by  main  force.^ 

It  would  be  in  vain  for  me  to  attempt  to  give 
you  in  this  lecture  the  terrible  details  of  the 
bloody  battle  of  Borodino.  The  main  French 
movement  was  directed  against  the  Russian  left ; 
but  partly  from  hindrances  occasioned  by  the 
nature  of  the  country,  and  partly  from  the  ob- 
stinate resistance  everywhere  encountered,  it  did 
not  succeed  in  accomplishing  what  was  expected 
of  it.  Ney  attacked  the  Russian  centre,  and  was 
the  hero  of  the  day.  The  Viceroy  commanded 
on  the  left.  The  grand  redoubt  in  the  centre 
of  the  Russian  position  was  captured  and  re- 
captured more  than  once.  The  Russians  had 
a  strong  position  and  excellent  infantry ;  the 
French  were  superior  in  cavalry  and  artillery. 
The  battle  was  fought  at  close  quarters,  and  the 

^  See  Appendix  V. 


TILSIT   TO  MOSCOW.  173 

carnao-e  was  terrible.     The  Russians  admitted  a 

o 

loss  of  50,000  men.  Bagration  was  mortally 
wounded.  The  French  probably  lost  at  least 
30,000.  The  Russian  commander  fought  a 
strictly  defensive  battle,  and  he  fought  it  skil- 
fully. Whenever  the  assailants  seemed  to  have 
gained  a  point,  Koutousof  brought  up  fresh 
troops  from  other  parts  of  the  field,  and  for 
hours  he  maintained  his  position  substantially  in- 
tact. At  last,  however,  the  superior  fighting  of 
the  French  began  to  tell.  One  by  one  the  Rus- 
sians were  forced  out  of  their  works.  Davout, 
Ney,  and  Prince  Eugene  united  their  commands, 
and  beat  back  the  Russian  left  and  centre.  It 
was  evident  to  these  experienced  officers  that  a 
severe  blow  struck  now  would  do  the  business  for 
the  army  of  Koutousof.  They  sent  to  the  Em- 
peror, and  begged  him  to  put  in  the  Guard.  Na- 
poleon hesitated  ;  he  had  not  been  able  to  see 
for  himself  what  was  happening  as  clearly  as  he 
generally  could  in  a  battle,  owing  to  the  nature 
of  the  Russian  position,  and  he  was  by  no  means 
sure  that  they  had  not  other  reserves.  Bessieres, 
who  commanded  the  cavalry  of  the  Guard,  re- 
minded him  that  he  was  more  than  1,500  miles 
from  Paris.  Napoleon  would  not  give  the  order. 
The  exhausted  troops  at  the  front  went  on  fight- 
ing and  did  their  best ;  but  the  Russian  army, 
though  dreadfully  cut  up,  still  maintained  its 
order  and  discipline,  and,  falling  back  a  short 
distance,  gave  up  to  the  French  only  the  field  of 
battle. 


174  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

This  refusal  of  Napoleon's  to  put  in  the  Guard 
at  Borodino  has  been  severely  criticised,  and  I 
think  with  reason.  He  himself  defended  it  on 
the  ground  that  it  was  absolutely  necessary  for 
him  to  have  a  coiys  d' elite  to  rely  upon  in  case 
of  disaster,  such  as  happened  in  the  retreat  from 
Russia.  But  such  considerations  are  out  of 
place,  in  a  death  struggle  like  Borodino.  In 
fact,  if  Napoleon  did  not  mean  to  fight  the 
Guard,  it  was  a  mistake  to  advance  beyond  Smo- 
lensk ;  for  advancing  beyond  Smolensk  meant  a 
great  battle,  and  it  is  not  common  sense  to  en- 
gage in  a  great  battle  and  not  do  your  uttermost 
to  win  it.  In  other  words,  if  the  Guard  was  to 
be  reserved  in  the  day  of  battle,  the  question  for 
the  Emperor  in  advancing  beyond  Smolensk  was 
whether,  with  the  rest  of  the  army  without  the 
Guard,  he  could  reasonably  count  on  a  decisive 
victory ;  if  he  could  not  answer  this  question  in 
the  affirmative,  and  he  certainly  could  not  have 
done  so,  it  was  clearly  unwise  to  advance  beyond 
Smolensk.  But,  in  point  of  fact,  Napoleon  did 
count  the  Guard  in  when  he  made  his  calcula- 
tions for  the  advance  to  Moscow  ;  he  undoubt- 
edly intended  to  put  it  in  whenever  the  critical 
moment  should  arrive  ;  yet  when,  from  the  best 
information  he  could  get,  that  moment  had  ar- 
rived, he  yielded,  in  a  way  very  unlike  himself, 
to  the  suggestions  of  an  unwise  caution.  It  was 
a  terrible  mistake  :  the  Russian  Colonel  Bour- 
tourlin,  in  his  admirable  history,  states  that,  had 


TILSIT   TO  MOSCOW.  1T5 

Napoleon  put  in  the  Guard  at  three  in  the  after- 
noon, he  would  have  succeeded  in  overwhelming 
the  Russian  army,  and  that  he  could  have  com- 
pleted its  rout  during  the  foiu'  hours  of  daylight 
yet  remainmg.  Had  the  Russian  army  been  de- 
stroyed as  an  organization,  Alexander  would  prob- 
ably have  made  peace ;  but  as  his  army  fell 
back  in  perfect  order,  it  was  simj^ly  necessary  to 
recruit  and  reinforce  it  to  make  it  as  formidable 
as  ever.  Hence  Napoleon  gained  nothing  by  the 
battle  except  the  undisturbed  road  to  Moscow, 
where  he  arrived  on  the  14th  of  September. 


LECTURE  V. 


MOSCOW    TO    ELBA. 


Napoleon  had  arrived  at  Moscow.  He  had 
with  him  somewhat  over  100,000  men,  a  good 
deal  tired  out,  to  be  sure,  and  a  large  park  of  ar- 
tillery. His  cavalry,  though  numerous,  was  not 
in  good  condition,  having  suffered  much  from 
lack  of  forage.  But  he  now  expected  to  be  able 
to  repair  all  these  defects.  He  had,  moreover, 
arrano-ed  for  reinforcements  beius:  sent  to  him 
from  the  various  depots.  The  army  was  ably 
commanded.  It  is  unnecessary  to  speak  of  the 
military  capacity  of  Davout  and  Ney.  The 
Viceroy  Eugene  had  throughout  this  campaign 
showed  that  he  possessed  the  highest  qualities  as 
a  corps  commander.  Murat  was  unrivalled  as  a 
leader  of  cavalry.  Besides  these  men  of  the  first 
distinction  were  many  other  officers  whose  capa- 
city and  courage  had  made  them  men  of  mark. 
The  weather  was  excellent.  The  Russian  au- 
tumn is  a  good  deal  like  our  own,  and  no 
months  in  the  year  are  finer  than  September  and 
October.  The  army  had  arrived  at  its  objective 
point,  and  was  looking  forward  to  rest,  recruit' 
ment,  a  speedy  peace,  and  a  safe  return. 


MOSCOW  TO  ELBA.  177 

You  all  know  how  these  expectations  were 
disappointed ;  how  Count  Rostopchin,  the  gov- 
ernor of  Moscow,  after  vainly  trying  to  get  old 
Koutousof  to  fioht  another  battle  for  the  de- 
fence  of  the  city,  proposed  its  abandonment  as  a 
patriotic  duty ;  how  the  inhabitants,  animated 
with  a  desperate  hate  of  the  invaders,  only  to  be 
found  among  a  people  imperfectly  civilized,  fell 
in  with  the  Count's  suggestion,  and,  before  the 
arrival  of  the  French,  left  the  doomed  city  ;  how 
Rostopchin  then  set  fire  to  it,  and  how  during 
the  three  days  of  the  conflagration  nine  tenths 
of  the  city  were  laid  in  ashes. 

No  more  appalling  catastrophe  ever  befell  an 
invading  army.  It  could  not  but  have  a  pro- 
found effect  even  upon  the  veteran  soldiery  of 
Napoleon,  —  nay,  upon  Napoleon  himself.  It 
should  have  convinced  him  of  the  implacable 
hostiHty  of  his  enemy ;  that  to  negotiate  for 
peace  was  useless,  and  worse  than  useless,  for  it 
consumed  valuable  time,  and  a  Russian  winter 
was  approaching. 

A  reasonable  time  certainly  it  was  worth  while 
to  stay  in  Moscow,  sufficient  to  refresh  the  troops 
and  rest  the  worn-out  horses.  Let  it  even  be 
granted  that  it  was  worth  while  to  send  an  en- 
voy to  St.  Petersburg,  and  to  wait  until  he 
should  have  had  time  enouoh  to  deliver  his  mes- 
sage  and  to  return.  But  to  wait  longer  than 
this  was  simply  to  tempt  fortune.  It  is  true 
that  there  was  still  plenty  of  accommodation  for 

12 


178  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

the  troops.  There  were  also  provisions  enough 
in  Moscow  to  last  the  men  for  many  weeks.  But 
after  these  should  be  exhausted,  there  was  no 
means  of  procuring  more.  For  an  army  to  oc- 
cupy a  large  and  populous  city  is  one  thing ;  to 
occupy  the  houses  in  which  the  population  for- 
merly lived  is  a  very  different  thing.  In  the  one 
case  the  army  merely  increases  the  population  of 
the  city ;  and  it  avails  itself  of  the  usual  chan- 
nels by  which  the  population  is  supplied  with 
food.  In  the  other  case  there  is  no  such  machin- 
ery to  be  availed  of ;  the  army  must  supply  itself. 

But,  even  if  mth  the  strictest  economy  the 
troops  themselves  could  have  been  fed  during 
the  long  Russian  winter  from  the  stores  found  in 
the  cellars  and  magazines  of  Moscow,  there  was 
no  hope  of  finding  anywhere  sufficient  forage 
for  the  horses ;  and  an  army  without  horses  is 
helpless.  There  was  therefore  nothing  to  do, 
but  to  prepare  to  go,  and  the  sooner  the  prepara- 
tions could  be  made,  the  better  on  all  accounts. 

Yet  Napoleon  lingered.  A  retreat  through  a 
desolate  and  hostile  country  was  likely  to  be  ac- 
comjDanied  with  considerable  losses  of  men  and 
material.  Moreover  to  retreat  was  to  confess 
himself  foiled,  that  the  object  of  the  war  had 
not  been  attained.  To  avoid  this  painful  neces- 
sity it  was,  he  thought,  justifiable  to  risk  some- 
thing. He  thought  it  possible  that  Alexander 
might  still  recede  from  his  high  ground,  and 
negotiate  for  peace.     He  waited,  in  the  hope 


MOSCOW   TO  ELBA.  179 

that  fortune  might  have  some  good  thing  in 
store  for  him.  But  kick  never  helps  a  man  who 
relies  on  it.  The  only  sound  and  rational  course 
in  any  emergency  is  to  be  governed  by  the  ascer- 
tained facts  and  to  act  on  them,  without  regard 
to  a  possible  turn  of  the  tide.  If  Alexander  in- 
tended to  treat  with  Napoleon  at  Moscow,  Napo- 
leon would  have  heard  of  it  in  a  week  or  ten 
days  at  furthest.  When  that  time  had  elapsed 
without  any  negotiation  being  begun,  the  only 
thing  to  do  was  to  get  the  army  into  safe  winter- 
quarters. 

This,  though  doubtless  a  difficult  task,  was  by 
no  manner  of  means  an  impracticable  one,  had 
Napoleon  set  about  it  seriously  and  in  good  sea- 
son. There  was  an  abundance  of  horses,  such 
as  they  were,  and  an  abundance  of  wagons  of  all 
sorts.  There  were  certainly  provisions  for  two  or 
three  weeks,  besides  plenty  of  superfluous  horses, 
which  would  furnish  an  excellent  substitute  for 
beef.  There  was  also  no  difficulty  in  supplying 
the  troops  with  winter  clothing.  The  officers 
generally  did  provide  themselves  with  furs.  And 
it  would  have  been  easy  to  obtain  sheepskin 
coats,  such  as  are  worn  by  the  Russian  peasantry, 
for  every  private  in  the  ranks.  The  army  might 
have  left  Moscow  provided  for  every  emergency 
so  far  as  the  men  were  concerned,  certainly  until 
Smolensk  should  have  been  reached.  As  for  the 
horses,  forage  could  have  been  found  for  them 
by  taking  roads  not  hitherto  traversed.     But  in 


180  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

order  to  carry  all  this  out  successfully  it  was  nec- 
essary for  Napoleon  to  bend  his  mind  to  it ;  to 
reaHze  fully  the  difficulties  of  his  position,  and 
to  feel  that  in  the  emergency  in  which  he  now 
found  himself,  it  would  be  a  great  feat  for  him, 
a  task,  moreover,  to  which  he  was  called  by  every 
consideration  of  honor  and  duty,  to  bring  the 
army  back  in  good  order  and  condition.  This, 
however,  seems  really  not  to  have  seriously  en- 
tered his  mind.  He  appears  to  have  shut  his  eyes 
to  the  perils  which  were  manifest  to  every  one 
else,  to  have  culpably  delayed  his  departure,  and, 
when  he  did  undertake  to  retreat,  to  have  neg- 
lected the  most  ordinary  precautions.  If  he  had 
waited  in  Moscow  a  fortnight  only,  and  had  left 
on  the  1st  of  October,  Smolensk  might  have 
been  reached  by  the  15th  or  16th.  Here  were 
large  supplies.  In  four  or  five  days  more,  that 
is  on  the  20th  or  21st  of  October,  Orcha  could 
have  been  reached,  where  was  another  d^pot  of 
supplies.  To  reach  the  Beresina,  if  he  had 
marched  that  way,  was  only  a  matter  of  three 
or  four  days,  and  as  early  as  October  21:th  or 
25th  no  Russian  army  was  anywhere  near  it. 
From  the  Beresina  to  Wilna  is  a  march  of  only 
ten  or  eleven  days  ;  that  is,  Wilna  might  have 
been  reached  before  the  6th  of  November,  which 
was  the  first  very  cold  day,  and  at  Smorgoni,  on 
the  road  to  Wilna,  there  was  another  depot  of 
supplies.  Or,  if  it  had  been  thought  best,  the 
army,  or  a  part  of  it,  might  have  gone  to  Minsk, 


MOSCOW  TO  ELBA.  181 

where  were  large  stores.  In  fact,  had  Napoleon 
with  his  army  been  at  Smolensk  on  the  14th  of 
October  instead  of  on  the  14th  of  November,  as 
was  the  case,  he  could  have  disposed  of  his  army 
in  Lithuania  without  difficulty  and  without  seri- 
ous loss,  and  he  would  thereby  have  added 
greatly  to  his  military  reputation. 

Napoleon  remained  in  Moscow  till  the  19th 
of  October.  He  had  been  there  more  than  a 
month.  He  had  utterly  failed  to  engage  the 
Czar  in  any  negotiation.  He  had  undertaken 
nothing  against  the  Russian  army,  which  had  in- 
creased in  numbers  and  improved  in  organization 
and  condition.  True,  his  own  army,  though 
somewhat  reinforced,  was  not  equal  to  any  very 
difficult  task.  But,  unless  he  was  determined  to 
destroy  Koutousof 's  army,  Napoleon  should  have 
commenced  his  retreat  while  that  army  was  still 
suffering  from  the  effects  of  the  battle  of  Boro- 
dino. He  had  now  to  encounter  all  the  difficul- 
ties of  the  march  and  run  the  gauntlet  of  the 
Russian  army  into  the  bargain. 

Nor  was  this  all.  While  Napoleon  was  wast- 
ing time  at  Moscow,  the  Russian  forces  which 
were  operating  on  his  long  line  of  communi- 
cations were  strengthened,  and  were  now  dan- 
gerously near  cutting  that  line  in  two.  Witt- 
genstein on  the  north  was  fighting  St.  Cyr  at 
Polotsk,  and  on  the  very  day  when  Napoleon 
left  Moscow,  Polotsk  was  evacuated.  Tchitcha- 
goff  on  the  south  was  eluding  Schwartzenberg, 


182  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

was  fighting  Dombrowski,  and  was  drawing  near 
to  Minsk.  Oudinot,  with  the  second  corps,  and 
Victor  with  a  fresh  corps  of  30,000  men,  were 
vainly  endeavoring  to  make  head  against  these 
powerful  Russian  armies. 

Whichever  way  one  looked,  the  situation  was 
a  gloomy  one. 

Various  causes,  moreover,  contributed  to  lower 
the  morale  and  impair  the  discipline  of  the  grand 
army.  Among  these  may  be  mentioned  the  fact 
that  it  was  composed  of  such  mixed  materials. 
The  same  corps  would  contain  Germans,  French, 
and  ItaHans.  Anything  that  renders  the  men  of 
the  same  military  unit  strangers  to  one  another, 
impairs  their  confidence  in  each  other,  and  weak- 
ens the  bonds  of  discipline.  Then  the  difficulty 
in  finding  food  and  forage  on  the  march  to 
Moscow  had  induced  pillaging,  than  which  noth- 
ing is  more  antagonistic  to  military  order.  The 
ransacking  of  the  deserted  houses  and  cellars 
of  Moscow,  and  the  appropriation  of  the  good 
things  found  there,  of  food,  drink,  and  clothing, 
had  only  made  matters  worse.  Moreover,  when 
the  army  did  march,  it  was  accompanied  by  an 
innumerable  crowd  of  wagons  of  all  sorts,  car- 
rying sick  and  wounded  officers  and  soldiers, 
French  residents  of  Moscow,  women,  booty,  pro- 
visions, encumbering  the  roads,  delaying  the 
march,  and  distracting  the  attention  of  the  gen- 
erals. 

To  have  checked  these  disorders,  to  have  en* 


MOSCOW  TO  ELBA.  183 

forced  rigid  discipline,  to  have  seen  to  it  that  the 
army  was  fully  equipped  for  cold  weather,  and 
that,  while  its  transportation  was  sufficient,  it 
should  be  encumbered  with  no  additional  impe- 
dhnentay  would  certainly  not  have  been  an  easy 
task,  yet  it  was  a  task  imperatively  demanded  by 
the  exigency  in  which  Napoleon  found  himself.^ 
It  is  true  that  the  Guard  maintained  their  usual 
strict  discipline  and  admirable  countenance.  But 
the  rest  of  the  army  was  in  no  condition  to  resist 
an  unusual  strain. 

Napoleon's  plan  was  to  return  by  way  of  Ka- 
louga  through  the  southern  provinces  of  Russia. 
Koutousof's  army,  however,  barred  the  way,  and 
after  a  sanguinary  and  indecisive  action  at  Malo- 
Jaroslawetz  on  October  24:th,  the  Emperor  deter- 
mined to  return  the  way  he  had  come.  This 
affair  caused  a  ^elay  of  some  days,  and  even 
before  the  army  could  reach  Smolensk,  the  cold 
and  snow  had  come.  On  November  4th  and 
5th  there  was  snow ;  on  the  6th  it  was  very 
cold ;  on  the  9th  it  was  only  5°  above  zero,  on 
the  13th  it  was  5°  below  zero.  The  losses  were 
friofhtf ul  both  in  men  and  horses ;  and  in  the 
bodily  suffering  caused  by  the  severe  cold,  dis- 
cipline became  fatally  relaxed.  Different  por- 
tions of  the  army  also  suffered  considerably  at 
Viazma  and  other  points  from  the  attacks  of  the 
enemy  before  reaching  Smolensk. 

^  The  Emperor,  however,  did  all  that  mau  could  do  to  send 
the  sick  aud  wounded  to  the  rear. 


184  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON, 

Napoleon  seems  now  to  have  become  aroused 
to  a  sense  of  his  danger  and  his  responsibilities. 
He  remained  at  Smolensk  five  days,  attending  to 
the  reorganization  of  the  army,  to  the  distribu- 
tion of  provisions  to  the  troops,  and  sending  off 
the  sick  and  wounded.  But  thing's  had  become 
very  much  worse  since  he  had  left  Moscow.  Out 
of  the  115,000  men  which  marched  out  of  the 
Russian  capital,  not  50,000  were  with  their  regi- 
ments. Nearly  400  cannon  had  been  abandoned. 
There  were  no  frost-nails  to  insert  into  the 
horses'  shoes,  such  as  the  Russians  habitually  use 
on  slippery  roads,  and  it  was  sometimes  almost 
impossible  for  the  artillery  and  wagons  to  pro- 
ceed. The  sick,  wounded,  and  stragglers  accom- 
panying the  army  numbered  some  30,000. 

On  the  14th,  Napoleon  with  the  Guard  left 
Smolensk.  The  other  corjjs  W(fre  to  follow,  first, 
that  of  the  Viceroy,  then  that  of  Davout,  finally 
that  of  Ney.  Why  the  Emperor  chose  to  march 
his  army  in  detachments,  it  is  hard  to  say.  No 
good  reason  that  I  know  of  can  be  given  for  it. 
In  the  state  in  which  the  troops  then  were,  the 
isolation  of  a  corps  was,  of  itself,  a  cause  of  de- 
moralization. Besides,  the  Russians  were  pursu- 
ing by  parallel  roads,  and  were  certain  to  inter- 
vene between  the  colunins. 

The  succeeding  fortnight  is  the  critical  part 
of  the  retreat  from  Russia.  As  might  have  been 
expected,  the  detached  corps  were  attacked  sep- 
arately.    The  Emperor  arrived  at  Krasnoi  on  the 


MOSCOW  TO  ELBA.  185 

15th,  and  found  himself  confronted  by  a  consid- 
erable Russian  force.  He  put  a  bold  face  on  it, 
however,  and  maintained  his  position.  In  the 
night  of  the  15th  and  16th  the  Viceroy  ar- 
rived. He  had  been  intercepted,  and  nothing 
but  perfect  presence  of  mind  and  great  military 
skill  extricated  him  from  his  toils.  But  Eugene 
brought  no  word  of  either  Davout  or  Ney. 
There  was  great  cause  to  fear  that  they  with 
their  weak  commands  were  cut  off.  The  Emperor 
however  was  determined  to  wait  a  while  longer, 
and  see.  He  disposed  his  troops  with  excellent 
judgment,  and  actually  from  time  to  time  took 
the  offensive.  All  day  of  the  16th  Napoleon 
and  his  step-son  stoutly  held  their  own  against  a 
largely  superior  and  steadily  increasing  force. 
On  the  17th  Davout  arrived.  He  had  waited 
for  Ney,  but  having  heard  of  Eugene's  misfor- 
tunes, judged  it  more  important  to  go  forward 
and  join  the  Emperor.  He  brought  no  word  of 
Ney.  It  had  now  become  impracticable  to  wait 
longer  at  Krasnoi,  as  the  enemy  had  begun  a 
movement  which  would  cut  the  line  of  retreat, 
and  on  the  afternoon  of  the  17th  Napoleon  with 
his  corps,  such  they  were,  united,  set  off  for  Or- 
cha,  where  he  arrived  the  next  day. 

Napoleon's  conduct  at  Krasnoi  deserved  and 
has  received  the  highest  eulogiums.  Had  he 
selfishly  pursued  his  course,  Eugene  and  Davout 
could  not  have  escaped  being  captured.  "  It 
was,"  says  Sir  Robert  Wilson,  who  was  serving 


186  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

at  the  time  at  the  Russian  headquarters,  "  a  day 
of  honor  for  Napoleon,  who  had  shown  "  great 
presence  of  mind,  dauntless  intrepidity,  and  con- 
summate practical  skill." 

At  Orcha  Napoleon  was  rejoined  by  Ney. 
That  indomitable  officer,  having  found  the  direct 
road  completely  occupied  by  a  large  force,  which 
he  made  a  gallant  but  unsuccessful  attempt  to 
dislodge,  recrossed  on  the  ice  to  the  north  side 
of  the  Dneiper,  and,  keeping  in  the  woods,  suf- 
fering terrible  privations,  and  losing  the  gTeater 
part  of  his  command,  succeeded  in  bringing  the 
remnant  of  his  corps  safely  into  the  lines  on 
the  20th,  to  the  great  joy  of  the  Emj)eror  and 
the  army. 

It  would  seem  as  if  the  larger  part  of  the 
losses  sustained  in  these  terrible  days  from  the 
14th  to  the  20tli  was  attributable  to  the  separa- 
tion of  the  corps  in  marching.  The  weather  had 
from  the  time  of  leaving  Smolensk  begun  to 
moderate.  On  the  19th  a  thaw  had  commenced. 
The  march  from  Smolensk  to  Orcha  could  cer- 
tainly have  been  made  in  three  or  four  days  ; 
and,  supplied  as  the  army  had  been  from  the 
stores  at  Smolensk,  and  in  weather  which  ought 
not  to  have  been  insupportable  to  men  well  fed 
and  properly  clad,  it  might  have  reached  Orcha 
in  good  order  and  condition,  had  it  only  been 
kept  together. 

Napoleon  remained  at  Orcha  two  days,  or- 
ganizing the  army  and  especially  the  artillery. 


MOSCOW  TO  ELBA.  187 

There  were  still  twenty-four  batteries,  of  six 
pieces  each,  besides  those  belonging  to  the  Guard. 
Arms,  ammunition,  and  provisions  were  served 
out  to  the  men,  and  the  army  prepared  for  a 
fresh  wrestle  with  adverse  fortune.  Some  rein- 
forcements also  were  received.  It  was  expected 
that  at  the  Beresina,  towards  which  the  march 
was  directed,  the  army  would  be  augmented  by 
the  comparatively  fresh  troops  of  Victor  and 
Oudinot,  and  by  the  division  of  Dombrowski. 

Napoleon  wrote  to  Oudinot  to  prepare  for 
the  crossing,  and  sent  him  the  able  and  experi- 
enced engineers  Eble  and  Chasseloup,  and  also 
the  famous  General  Jomini.  These  officers  pre- 
ceded the  march  of  the  army. 

Fortunately  for  the  French,  Koutousof  had 
conceived  the  idea  that  Napoleon  was  intending 
to  cross  the  Beresina  at  a  point  some  fifty  miles 
south  of  that  which  he  had  in  reality  selected, 
and  the  march  of  the  French  army  towards  Bori- 
sow  was  therefore  uninterrupted.  But  Admiral 
Tchitchao'off  was  holdino-  the  rioht  or  western 
bank  of  the  river,  and  Wittgenstein,  who  was  on 
the  eastern  side,  had  it  in  his  power  to  impede 
any  attempt  at  crossing. 

On  arriving  at  Borisow  the  wearied  and  dis- 
couraged troops  under  Napoleon  met  the  two 
fine  corps  of  Oudinot  and  Victor.  These  troops 
having  been  well  fed  and  cared  for,  and  not  hav- 
ing been  subjected  to  the  unintermitted  march- 
ing and  fighting  which,  together  with  the  severe 


188  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

weather,  had  so  disorganized  and  demoraHzed  the 
principal  eokimn,  were  in  good  order  and  con- 
dition. Oudinot  and  Victor  were  men  of  well- 
known  energy  and  courage.  There  were  now 
about  40,000  fighting  men  in  the  army,  under 
the  colors.  There  were  actually  some  260  guns, 
"tolerably  well  horsed,"  as  Sii*  Robert  Wilson 
tells  us.  The  great  difficulty  came  from  the 
enormous  mass  of  stra^-olers,  and  from  the  wao-- 
ons  and  carts  containing  the  sick  and  wounded. 
Probably  these  followers  of  the  army  were  as 
numerous  as  the  army  itself. 

Napoleon  on  his  arrival  approved  at  once  of 
the  position  at  Studianka  which  Oudinot  and  the 
engineer  officers  had  selected  for  the  crossino-. 
Through  gross  recklessness  the  pontoon  trains 
had  been  destroyed  at  Orcha,  and  it  was  neces- 
sary to  build  bridges.  Had  the  pontoons  been 
on  hand  the  army  could  have  crqssed  in  one  day 
without  the  least  trouble.  As  it  was,  all  day  of 
the  26th  was  occupied  in  building  the  brido-es. 
Napoleon  was  there  on  the  spot,  from  which  he 
never  moved  till  the  work  was  done.  During 
this  time  a  feint  of  crossing  was  made  at  Bori- 
sow,  and  the  Admiral  was  deluded  into  remain- 
ing in  that  neighborhood.  The  troops  of  Oudi- 
not crossed  in  the  afternoon  over  the  first  bridge. 
The  second  bridge,  which  was  built  specially  for 
the  transit  of  the  artillery  and  wagons,  was  fin- 
ished at  dark.  The  artillery  of  Oudinot's  corps 
and  of  the  Guard  then  passed  over.     In  the  after* 


MOSCOW  TO  ELBA.  189 

noon  of  the  27th,  Napoleon  with  the  Guard 
crossed,  as  did  also  a  multitude  of  the  stragglers. 
Up  to  this  time  there  had  been  no  serious  fight- 
ing. Late  the  same  afternoon,  however,  one  of 
Victor's  divisions,  that  of  Partonneaux,  in  march- 
ing from  Borisow  to  Studianka,  was  surrounded 
and  obliged  to  capitulate.  During  that  night 
all  the  other  troops  crossed  the  river,  save  Ge- 
rard's division  of  Victor's  corps. 

From  a  purely  military  point  of  view  the  op- 
eration was  now  finished.  To  withdraw  the  re- 
maining division  as  speedily  as  possible  was  ob- 
viously the  prudent  thing  to  do.  But  there  yet 
remained  the  greater  part  of  the  army-followers, 
a  great  many  carriages,  containing  sick  and 
wounded,  officers'  wives  and  children,  disbanded 
troops,  stragglers  of  all  sorts.  Most  of  these  had 
become  so  torpid  from  the  effect  of  continued 
privation  and  suffering  that  they  made  no  effort 
to  avail  themselves  of  the  facilities  which  the 
bridges  had  hitherto  offered  them.  Napoleon 
was  willing  to  delay  one  day  more  to  give  them 
another  chance.  This  decision,  unquestionably 
dictated  by  motives  of  humanity,  cannot,  how- 
ever, be  defended.  Napoleon  hated  the  thought 
of  abandoning  these  poor  people ;  yet  the  safety 
of  the  army  imperatively  demanded  that  he 
should  march  at  once.  The  care  of  the  army, 
with  whose  existence  was  bound  up  so  much  that 
was  of  vital  importance  to  the  Empire,  was  the 
paramount  duty. 


190  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

Nevertheless,  as  I  have  said,  he  gave  these 
poor  wretches  another  day.  But  to  do  this,  it 
was  necessary  for  him  to  fight  the  Admiral,  now 
awake  to  the  fact  that  he  had  been  outwitted,  on 
the  western  bank,  and  to  recross  another  of  Vic- 
tor's divisions  to  the  eastern  bank  to  assist  Ge- 
rard in  fiofhting-  Witto-enstein.  On  both  sides  of 
the  Beresina,  all  through  this  terrible  day  of  the 
28th  of  November,  the  French  held  their  own, 
thouoh  with  severe  loss.  It  was  not  until  nine 
in  the  eveniuo'  that  Victor  crossed  to  the  west- 
ern  side  with  his  two  divisions.  From  tune  to 
time  during  the  day,  the  apparently  inert  mass 
of  humanity  concealed  in  a  multitude  of  wag- 
ons, or  standing  round  fires  made  of  debris  of 
all  sorts,  had  been  fired  into  by  the  Russian 
guns,  and  then  and  only  then  was  there  a  rush 
for  the  bridges.  Such  was  the  confusion  among 
those  that  made  the  attempt,  that  the  bridges 
were  often  blocked,  and  the  next  morning,  the 
29th,  a  vast  crowd  still  remained  on  the  eastern 
shore. 

The  Emperor  could  wait  no  longer.  His  losses 
in  the  battle  of  the  preceding  day  had  been  very 
severe.  Several  generals  had  been  wounded, 
and  among  them  Oudinot ;  Victor's  corps,  wdiich 
had  covered  itself  with  glory,  had  suffered  se- 
verely. The  necessity  for  continuing  the  retreat 
was  imperative.  Eble  was  ordered  to  burn  the 
bridges  at  eight  o'clock  of  the  29th.  When  the 
smoke  began  to  ascend,  the  miserable  creatures 


MOSCOW   TO  ELBA.  191 

on  the  eastern  side  realized  that  they  had  lost 
their  last  chance.  Of  course,  they  all  fell  into 
the  hands  of  the  enemy. 

Such  was  the  terrible  passage  of  the  Beresina, 
in  which  one  cannot  fail  to  mark  the  great  abil- 
ity and  courage  disjDlayed  throughout  the  whole 
affair  by  Napoleon.  His  energy,  coolness,  pres- 
ence of  mind,  the  skill  with  which  he  deceived 
his  foes,  ensured  for  the  operation  an  almost 
complete  success.  The  distressing  circumstances, 
the  sanguinary  affairs  of  the  28tli,  the  sufferings 
of  the  multitude  who  were  left,  are  not  to  be 
attributed  to  any  military  fault,  but  to  the  un- 
wise, almost  culpable,  compassion  which  led  him 
to  risk  the  lives  of  his  brave  soldiers  and  to  im- 
peril gravely  the  fortunes  of  the  army,  to  afford 
another  day  of  opportunity  to  the  miserable  peo- 
ple whom,  as  he  slioidd  have  known,  nothing 
could  rouse  from  the  torpor  and  apathy  produced 
partly  by  suffering  and  partly  by  having  cast  off 
the  bonds  of  discipline.  Had  the  bridges  been 
burnt  on  the  morning  of  the  28th,  many  valu- 
able lives  would  have  been  saved,  and  the  dis- 
organization always  consequent  on  a  battle,  and 
which  is  especially  productive  of  harm  when  a 
bloody  battle  is  followed  by  a  hasty  retreat,  as 
in  this  case,  would  have  been  entirely  avoided. 

From  the  banks  of  the  Beresina  the  army  made 
its  way  as  rapidly  as  possible  to  Wilna.  Even  if 
there  had  been  food  enough  for  the  men  and 
forage  enough  for  the  horses,  it  would  have  been 


192  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

a  very  severe  experience,  for  the  weather  now 
became  and  continued  extremely  cold,  the  ther- 
mometer ranoino;  from  29°  to  35°  below  zero. 
But  there  was  not  anything  like  sufficient  forage 
and  food,  and  the  losses  were  frightful.  In  ad- 
dition to  other  sufferings,  the  Russians  from  time 
to  time  caught  up  with  the  rear  guard,  and  often 
inflicted  severe  loss.  StiU,  there  was  nothing  to 
prevent  the  debris  of  the  army  from  reaching 
Wilna,  where  were  abundant  stores  of  all  sorts, 
a  friendly  population,  and  a  French  garrison. 

This  being  so.  Napoleon  deemed  it  unneces- 
sary to  remain  longer  with  the  army.  He  had 
made  up  his  mind  that  unless  he  ajDpeared  on  the 
Vistula  the  next  spring,  a  new  and  formidable 
coalition  against  him  was  certain  to  be  formed, 
and  that  to  maintain  the  Empire  as  it  was,  it 
would  be  necessary  to  take  the  field  in  great 
force.  In  this  belief  he  was  doubtless  correct. 
He  saw,  too,  that  there  was  no  time  to  be  lost. 
The  sooner  he  was  in  Paris  the  better. 

Accordingly  he  set  out  on  the  5th  of  Decem- 
ber, accompanied  by  Caulaincourt,  Duroc,  and 
Lobau,  and  one  or  two  other  officers.  He  ran 
great  risk  of  being  captured  by  Cossacks,  but 
arrived  safely  at  Wilna,  and  thence  proceeded  to 
Paris.  Of  this  decision,  which  some  writers  have 
harshly  criticised,  it  is  sufficient  to  say,  in  the 
words  of  Sir  Robert  Wilson,  that  "  the  motives  " 
of  it  "  were  too  apparently  reasonable  and  pros- 
pectively beneficial  not  to  satisfy  every  one,  after 


-    MOSCOW  TO  ELBA.  193 

a  short  time,  that  it  was  not  a  flight  for  personal 
safety,  but  a  measure  of  paramount  necessity  for 
the  common  welfare." 

On  the  9th  of  December,  the  wreck  of  the 
grand  army  arrived  at  Wilna.  Such,  however, 
was  the  disorganization  that  prevailed,  that  it 
was  deemed  best  by  Murat,  to  whom  Napoleon 
had  confided  the  command  of  the  army,  to  evac- 
uate it  at  once.  The  weary  soldiers  were  soon  on 
the  march  again  for  Kowno,  where,  less  than  six 
months  before,  hundreds  of  thousands  of  brave 
troops  had  crossed  the  Niemen.  But  even  Kowno 
could  not  be  held,  and  the  few  troops  that  sur- 
vived retired  without  delay  into  Prussia. 

Thus  ended  the  Russian  campaign,  the  most 
terrible  of  which  we  have  any  knowledge.  From 
all  the  accounts,  I  gather  that  somewhere  about 
530,000  men  took  part  in  the  campaign  under 
Napoleon.^  Of  these,  the  Russians  estimate  that 
125,000  were  either  killed  in  battle  or  died  of 
wounds  ;  that  132,000  died  of  privation  and  dis- 
ease ;  that  193,000  were  taken  prisoners ;  that 
only  80,000  returned. 

I  think  this  estimate  erroneous  in  more  than 
one  point.  The  80,000  who  are  put  down  as 
returned,  returned  in  December.  Yet,  without 
question,  a  great  many  of  the  sick  and  wounded 
must  have  been  sent  back  long  before  that  time. 
These  would  serve  to   diminish  the  number  of 

^  See  Appendix  VI. 
13 


194  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

those  who  are  set  down  as  having  perished  by 
privation  and  disease. 

Besides,  there  were  more  than  80,000  that  re- 
turned in  December.  The  greater  number  of 
those  that  returned  consisted  of  the  Austrian 
contingent  under  Schwartzenberg,  the  seventh 
corps  under  Reynier,  which  accompanied  it,  and 
the  Prussian  contingent  under  Macdonakl ;  these 
troojjs  numbered  nearly  70,000  men.  And 
35,000  to  40,000  men  of  the  main  army  re- 
crossed  the  Niemen.  Of  these,  it  is  true,  a  large 
part  had  not  shared  in  the  campaign ;  they  were 
portions  of  the  garrisons  of  towns  on  the  line 
of  march.  Many  of  them  in  fact  had  recently 
entered  Russia  from  Germany.  The  total  of 
those  that  returned,  however,  cannot  be  far 
from  110,000  men. 

That  a  very  large  part  of  the  loss  arose  from 
preventable  causes  is  certain.  The  Due  de  Fe- 
zensac,  who  commanded  the  4th  regiment  of  the 
line,  tells  us  in  his  most  interesting  narrative 
what  became  of  the  officers  and  men  of  his  rem- 
ment.  Of  3,000  enlisted  men,  only  200  returned 
with  him  in  December.  But  of  some  96  officers 
who  set  out  from  Moscow,  49  returned  in  De- 
cember. This  shows  a  loss  which,  thouo-h  cer- 
tainly  severe,  is  by  no  means  unparalleled  in  war. 
Many  regiments  suffered  much  more  in  officers 
in  Grant's  campaign  from  the  Rapidan  to  Peters- 
burg. Had  the  men  been  as  provident  as  their 
officers,  they  would  no  doubt  have  fared  as  well 


MOSCOW  TO  ELBA.  195 

This  was  one  of  those  cases  where  superior  in- 
telligence goes  for  something.  We  may  also 
be  certain  that  had  it  been  possible  to  preserve 
strict  discipline,  the  men  could  not  have  suffered 
in  the  proportion  they  did.  But  this  seems  to 
have  been  found  impracticable. 

Sir  Robert  Wilson  tells  us  that,  after  pass- 
ing the  Beresina,  the  Russians  suffered  nearly 
as  much  as  the  French  from  want  of  food,  fuel, 
and  clothing,  and  of  course  quite  as  much  from 
cold,  and  that  the  various  Russian  commands 
lost  about  90,000  men  from  these  causes.  Nev- 
ertheless the  Russian  army  perfectly  preserved 
its  organization  and  discipline ;  it  only  needed 
reinforcements.  Whereas  the  allied  army,  with 
the  exception  of  the  Prussian  and  Austrian  con- 
tingents, and  such  French  troops  as  served  with 
them,  —  which  had  not  really  made  the  cam- 
paign, —  was  practically  dissolved. 

Murat,  ably  seconded  by  Eugene,  Ney,  Da- 
vout  and  a  host  of  gallant  officers,  made  every 
effort  to  collect  the  men  under  the  colors  and  to 
present  a  bold  front  to  the  enemy.  And  had 
the  Prussian  contingent  stood  by  their  allies  in 
this  emergency,  their  efforts  would  have  measur- 
ably succeeded.  But  the  disasters  of  the  French 
aroused  in  the  Prussians  a  fierce  hope  that  they 
miffht  now  shake  off  the  burden  alike  of  French 
alliance  and  of  French  superiority.  General 
Yorck,  who  commanded  a  Prussian  division  in 
Macdonald's  army,  arranged  with  the  opposing 


196  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

Russian  commanders  to  allow  them  to  get  upon 
his  line  of  retreat,  so  as  to  give  him  a  technical 
reason  for  entering  into  a  capitulation.  On  the 
30th  of  December,  this  officer  signed  a  conven- 
tion, in  which  he  included  the  other  Prussian 
division,  that  of  Massenbach,  which  was  at  the 
time  actually  serving  with  Macdonald's  column, 
by  the  terms  of  which  the  Prussian  forces  were 
to  remain  in  a  sort  of  neutral  territory.  This 
desertion  of  his  military  comrades  in  a  moment 
of  supreme  danger,  cannot  be  viewed  by  honor- 
able men  as  other  than  an  act  of  dujDlicity  and 
perfidy.  Many  writers  have  excused  it,  some 
have  even  praised  it.  To  their  minds  the  griev- 
ances of  Prussia  against  Napoleon  were  so  intol- 
erable, that  any  course  of  conduct,  no  matter 
how  opposed  to  the  ordinary  rules  of  good  faith 
and  honest  dealing,  is  justified  on  the  score  of 
patriotism.  I  do  not  so  regard  the  matter.  It 
may  sometimes  be  the  duty  of  a  nation,  as  it 
certainly  is  sometimes  the  duty  of  an  individual, 
to  put  up  with  evils  from  which  there  is  no  hon- 
orable and  righteous  way  of  escape.  It  might 
well  have  been  repugnant  to  General  Yorck's 
feelings  to  serve  in  Marshal  Macdonald's  army. 
If  so,  then  he  should  have  resigned.  In  a  cer- 
tain crisis  in  this  country,  many  officers  of  the 
United  States  army  found  themselves  unable,  on 
account  of  their  political  views,  to  continue  in 
service,  and,  as  soon  as  they  had  an  honorable 
opportunity,  they  resigned.     But  with  a  single 


MOSCOW  TO  ELBA.  197 

exception,  that  of  the  infamous  General  Twigg-s, 
they  did  not  surrender  the  forts  or  the  troops  in 
their  charge,  even  to  then-  own  States.  In  sev- 
eral cases,  notably  in  the  case  of  an  officer  who 
was  at  Fort  Sumter,  such  officers  fought  against 
the  cause  to  which  they  were  personally  attached, 
because  they  could  not  honorably  desert  the  flag 
under  which  they  were  serving  in  presence  of 
the  enemy.  They  in  fact  subordinated  politics 
to  the  inflexible  requirements  of  duty.  When 
they  had  turned  over  the  property  in  their  hands 
and  the  troops  in  their  charge  to  the  United 
States  authorities,  they  resigned,  but  not  until 
then.  With  the  exception  above  mentioned, 
there  were  no  deceptions  or  disgraceful  contriv- 
ances of  any  kind.  But  Torek's  surrender  was 
a  deliberate  compact  with  the  enemy.  When  he 
wrote  to  Macdonald  that  he  "  had  no  alternative 
but  either  to  sacrifice  the  greater  part  of  his 
troops  or  to  save  the  whole  by  making  a  conven- 
tion," he  told  Macdonald  a  deliberate  falsehood. 
When  he  wrote  to  the  King  of  Prussia  that  his 
position  was  desperate,  that  he  should  have  sac- 
rificed the  whole  corps  had  he  tried  to  escape 
from  the  Russians,  etc.,  he  was  lying  to  his  own 
sovereign.  Had  the  facts  been  as  he  stated  them 
to  the  king,  his  defence  was  an  easy  one,  and 
one  which  depended  entirely  on  military  reasons. 
But  he  discloses  the  real  truth  when  in  the  same 
letter  he  harps  upon  his  having  acted  as  "a 
true  Prussian,"   as   "a  patriot  who  only  sought 


198  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

the  welfare  of  his  country."  This  conchisively 
shows  the  falseness  of  his  pretence  about  his  ex- 
treme danger  being  the  justification  of  his  con- 
duct. It  is  well  to  call  a  spade,  a  spade ;  there 
can  be  no  question  that  General  Yorck  in  these 
letters  lied  to  Marshal  Macdonald  and  to  the 
king.  Love  of  country  is  doubtless  a  great 
virtue,  but  it  cannot  excuse  such  flagrant  dis. 
regard  of  military  honor  and  of  common  veracity 
as  Yorck  displayed  on  this  occasion. 

The  conduct  of  the  Austrian  contiugfent  under 
Prince  Schwartzenberg,  though  not  open  to  the 
charge  of  doubledealing,  was  characterized  by 
an  anxiety  to  avoid  above  all  things  an  engage- 
ment with  the  advancing  Russians.  It  was  per- 
haps to  be  expected  that  the  Austrians  should 
be  unwilling  to  see  the  stress  of  a  doubtful 
struggle  fall  upon  their  own  troops,  especially 
when  they  were  simply  serving  as  allies  to  the 
French.  Schwartzenberg  retired  mto  Galicia, 
leaving  Warsaw  to  its  fate. 

Thus  the  wreck  of  the  grand  army,  aban- 
doned by  its  allies,  was  unable  to  withstand  the 
invaders;  Warsaw  was  evacuated  early  in  Feb- 
ruary, and  the  much  coveted  Grand  Duchy  was 
occupied  by  Russian  troops. 

But  the  Czar  was  not  satisfied  with  this  trium- 
phant ending  to  the  invasion  of  Russia.  He 
aspu'ed  to  accomplish,  as  he  termed  it,  "  the  de- 
liverance of  Europe."  By  his  orders  Koutousof 
issued  a  proclamation  promising  the  aid  of  Rus- 


MOSCOW  TO  ELBA.  199 

sia  to  all  peoples  who  desired  her  help.  He 
counted  specially  on  the  patriotic  party  in  Prus- 
sia compelling  the  king,  who  still  faithfully  ad- 
hered to  the  French  alliance,  to  shake  it  off,  and 
to  join  heart  and  soid  with  Russia  in  an  attack 
on  the  Empire  of  Napoleon.  The  action  of 
Yorck  had  given  a  tremendous  impulse  to  this 
party  throughout  Prussia,  and  it  was  easy  to  see 
that  that  proud-spirited  people  would  ere  long 
embrace  the  opportunity  offered  them  to  avenge 
Jena  and  Auerstadt,  and  to  restore  to  Berlin  its 
former  dominatino-  influence  in  northern  Ger- 
many.  Prussia  had  indeed  suffered  grievously 
since  her  overthrow.  She  had  been  obliged  to 
maintain  an  army  of  occupation.  She  had  paid 
a  heavy  war  indemnity.  Her  territory  had  been 
from  time  to  time,  and  especially  during  the  late 
war  with  Russia,  marched  over  by  the  troops  of 
the  grand  army.  Then  her  army  had  been  re- 
stricted to  40,000  men,  a  restriction  especially 
galling  to  her  martial  spirit.  She  craved  revenge. ' 
With  Austria  the  case  was  different.  She  had 
lost  territory,  to  be  sure,  and  some  of  it  was  ter- 
ritory she  could  ill  spare,  such  as  her  provinces  on 
the  Adriatic.  But  she  had  never  been  subjected 
to  that  most  irritating  of  all  the  consequences  of 
an  unsuccessful  war,  the  presence  of  the  con- 
quering troops  after  peace  has  been  declared. 
Besides,  she  was  now,  since  the  marriage  of 
Maria  Louisa,  the  ally  of  France.  Nevertheless, 
there  was  quite  reason  enough  to  hope  that  Aus- 


200  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

tria  would  make  use  of  this  new  chance  to  re- 
cover her  lost  provinces,  or  some  of  them,  and 
to  resume,  if  she  could,  her  predominance  in  the 
states  of  southern  Germany. 

Besides  these  considerations,  which  were  plain- 
ly acting  on  Prussia  and  Austria,  were  others 
to  which  I  have  often  alluded  before.  There 
was  the  cause  of  the  dispossessed  princes  and 
potentates  of  western  Germany,  who  hoped  to 
see  their  vassals  restored  to  them  in  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  recent  Kingdom  of  WestphaHa  and 
the  reduction  of  Bavaria  and  Wiirtemberg  to 
their  ancient  limits.  There  were  even  men  who 
cherished  a  fanatical  belief  that  they  would  yet 
live  to  see  all  the  work  of  the  French  Revolu- 
tion destroyed,  all  its  sins  against  legitimacy 
and  political  order  expiated  and  avenged ;  who 
looked  confidently  to  God  to  prosper  what  they 
fully  believed  was  the  cause  of  religion  and 
order ;  whose  devout  aspiration  it  was  that  they 
might  live  to  behold  the  Bourbons  agam  on  the 
thrones  of  France,  Spain,  and  Naples,  the  Aus- 
trians  again  ruling  in  Italy,  while  the  emigrant 
nobility  of  France  and  western  Germany,  now 
returned  to  their  own  country,  should  again  be 
holding  their  petty  courts  and  living  on  their 
ancestral  acres  on  the  tolls  and  taxes  which  they 
had  an  immemorial  right  to  exact  of  their  less 
privileged  neighbors. 

To  this  bundle  of  aims  and  hopes  and  beliefs 
the   ancient   courts   and  aristocracies   gave  the 


MOSCOW   TO  ELBA.  201 

general  name  of  the  cause  of  the  deliverance  of 
Europe  from  the  yoke  of  Napoleon.  Never  has 
there  been  exhibited  to  more  advantage  the 
power  that  resides  in  a  name.  Let  it  be  granted 
that  it  would  be  in  some  respects  for  the  advan- 
tage of  Europe  if  Prussia  and  Austria  should  re- 
cover a  part,  at  any  rate,  of  what  they  had  lost 
by  the  fortune  of  war.  But  that  the  cause  of 
good  government  or  the  welfare  of  the  popula- 
tions would  be  advanced  by  bringing  back  the 
old  order  of  things  in  France,  western  Germany, 
or  Italy,  no  intelligent  man  ought  to  have  be- 
lieved for  a  moment. 

It  is  true  that  the  continent  was  suffering  from 
the  evils  of  war.  For  the  evils  of  war,  however, 
the  remedy  is  peace ;  and  peace  could  have  been 
had  at  any  time  if  only  the  ancient  monarchies 
and  aristocracies  of  Europe  had  been  willing  to 
accept  the  reorganization  of  western  Europe  un- 
der the  new  system  of  equal  rights  and  govern- 
ment for  the  people  which  had  taken  place  in 
consequence  of  the  French  Revolution.  But  the 
change  was  so  sudden  and  so  violent,  and  in- 
volved such  a  loss  to  them  of  power  and  prestige, 
that  they  could  not  and  would  not  accept  it. 
Perhaps  it  would  be  asking  too  much  of  poor 
human  nature  to  expect  that  they  should  have 
resigned  themselves  both  to  the  predominance  of 
France  and  to  the  triumph  over  so  large  a  part 
of  Europe  of  the  fundamental  social  and  political 
changes  embodied  in   the  Code  Napoleon.     It 


202  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

could  hardly  be  hoped  that  they  would  recognize 
the  real  truth  which  underlay  and  explained  the 
unwelcome  facts  which  made  the  Europe  of  1813 
such   a   different    country  from  the   Europe    of 
1783,   namely,   that   western    Europe,   with   the 
exception  of  the  Spanish  peninsula,  had  during 
these  thirty  years   passed  through  a  great  and 
most  wholesome  transition  as  well  in  the   ends 
and  aims  of  government  as  in  the  social  and  po- 
litical status  of  the  people.     Still  less  could  the 
reactionary  party  be   expected  to  recognize  the 
fact  that  the  preponderance  of  France  was  by  no 
means  a   permanent    concomitant    of  the   great 
transformation  which   western   Europe   had   un- 
dergone, although  it  was  during  the   epoch  of 
transition  a  necessary  element  of  that  transfor- 
mation.    In  the  minds  of  the  leaders  of  the  al- 
lied cause  in  1813,  the  war  was  a  sort  of  holy 
crusade  for  legitimacy  and  privilege  against  the 
all-devouring  ambition  of  an  aggressive  usurper. 
On  the  other  side,  Napoleon,  undismayed  by 
his  reverses  in  Russia,  was  raising  a  new  army 
with  which  he  expected  in  the  spring  to  over- 
awe Prussia,  and  to  drive  the  Russians  back  over 
the  Niemen.     He  felt,  and  no  doubt  rightly,  that 
unless  a  vigorous  stand  was  taken,  the  tide  of 
reaction  might  sweep  over  the  Empire.     France, 
though  grievously  suffering  from  the   frightful 
losses   of  the   Russian   camj^aign,  came   bravely 
forward  to   meet  the   emergency.     Hardly  less 
energetic  were  the  efforts  put  forth  by  the  states 


MOSCOW  TO  ELBA.  203 

o£  the  Confederation  of  the  Rhine,  and  by  Italy. 
The  Emperor  himself  worked  day  and  night. 

Meantime  Prussia  was  putting  her  army  on^ 
a  war  footing,  her  ministers  all  the  while  assuring 
the  French  ambassador  at  Berlin,  with  a  dupli- 
city well  nigh  unparalleled,  that  their  prepara- 
tions were  made  only  in  order  that  she  might 
make  a  suitable  appearance  in  the  coming  cam- 
paign on  the  side  of  France.  For  a  month  after 
a  treaty  of  alliance  with  Russia,  offensive  and 
defensive,  had  been  signed,  Prussia  continued 
warmly  to  protest  her  adhesion  to  the  cause  of 
Napoleon.  But  her  warlike  preparations,  as  well 
as  a  thousand  other  indications  of  popular  feel- 
ing, showed  clearly  enough  that  she  had  made 
up  her  mind  to  fight  a  desperate  struggle  mth 
France.  The  army  and  the  nobility  hated  France 
and  Napoleon  with  an  implacable  enmity,  born 
not  less  of  wounded  pride  than  of  actual  and 
tangible  grrievances. 

Great  efforts  were  made  to  crive  to  the  reae- 
tionary  movement  a  liberal  and  popular  charac- 
ter. Proclamations  were  issued  by  Russian  and 
Prussian  generals  promising  liberty  and  equality 
to  the  people,  and  in  the  heat  and  excitement  of 
the  war  fever,  and  in  the  midst  of  the  patriotic 
fury  that  prevailed,  few  people  had  the  sense  to 
see  the  patent  and  absurd  deception  involved  in 
raising  and  cherishing  ex|3ectations  of  this  nature 
from  such  sources. 

Even   this  was  not  sufficient.      The  new  cru- 


204  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

sade  in  favor  of  liberty  and  equality  carried  on 
by  the  autocrat  of  all  the  Russias  must  take  on 
a  pan-Germanic  coloring  also,  to  make  it,  if  pos- 
sible, attractive  to  those  German  communities 
which  were  hving  under  the  Code  Napoleon,  and 
could  not  be  supposed  to  be  specially  anxious 
for  the  bestowal  of  that  particular  variety  of 
liberty  and  equahty  dispensed  by  the  Czar.  Ac- 
cordingly, Koutousof  proclaims  the  dissolution 
of  the  Confederation  of  the  Rhine.  Wittgen- 
stein refuses  to  recognize  as  a  German  any  man 
who  prefers  to  remaia  quiet  in  this  emergency. 
Blucher  urges  the  Saxons  to  raise  the  standard 
of  insurrection  against  foreign  usurpation.  But 
appeals  of  this  sort  were  evidently  not  much 
relied  on.  The  generals  in  the  ser\dce  of  Rus- 
sia had  a  much  shorter  mode  of  convincinof 
their  opponents.  Wittgenstein  says :  "  You 
must  choose  between  my  fraternal  affection  and 
my  sword."  And  Koutousof  demands  of  the 
princes  of  the  confederation  "faithful  and  en- 
tu*e  cooperation,"  and  menaces  with  destruction 
those  among  them  who  are  traitors  to  the  cause 
of  the  German  fatherland. 

I  have  admitted  that  Prussia  had  serious  and 
tangible  grievances,  which,  taken  in  connection 
mtli  the  hatred  and  desire  for  revenge  caused  by 
her  complete  overthrow  in  1806,  may  account 
for  the  state  of  feeling  among  her  people.  Still 
it  is  clear  enough  that  these  motives  needed  to 
be  supplemented.     Else  why  these  wild  appeals 


MOSCOW   TO  ELBA.  205 

to  the  people,  these  dehisive  promises  of  liberty, 
this  talk  about  the  German  fatherland  ?  All  this 
sort  of  thing  was  done  simply  for  effect,  as  the 
event  abundantly  proved.  None  of  the  promises 
were  ever  kept. 

And  what  shall  we  say  about  the  threats  ut- 
tered so  freely  against  the  German  communities 
which  adhered  to  the  Empire  ?  What  was  this 
terrible  foreign  yoke  which  they  were  to  throw 
off,  in  order  to  join  the  Czar  and  the  King  in 
their  crusade  for  popular  liberty  ?  Let  me  read 
a  few  words  from  a  recent  English  work  written 
by  a  man  who  is  wholly  in  sympathy  with  this 
crusade,  and  who  cannot  therefore  be  charfifed 
with  misrepresenting  facts  against  the  cause 
which  he  favors  :  — 

"  All  Italy,  the  northern  districts  of  Germany  which 
were  incorporated  with  the  Empire,  and  a  great  part 
of  the  Confederate  Territory  of  the  Rhine,  received  in 
the  Code  Napoleon  a  law  which,  to  an  extent  hitherto 
unknown  in  Europe,  brought  social  justice  into  the 
daily  affairs  of  life.  The  privileges  of  the  noble,  the 
feudal  burdens  of  the  peasant,  the  monopolies  of  the 
guilds,  passed  away,  in  most  instances  forever.  The 
comfort  and  improvement  of  mankind  were  vindicated 
as  the  true  aim  of  property  by  the  abolition  of  the  de- 
vices which  convert  the  soil  into  an  instrument  of  fam- 
ily pride,  and  by  the  enforcement  of  a  fair  division 
of  inheritances  among  the  children  of  the  possessor. 
Legal  process,  both  civil  and  criminal,  was  brought 
within  the  comprehension  of  ordinary  citizens,  and 
subjected  to  the  test  of  publicity. "    "  Even  the  misused 


206  THE   FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

peasantry  of  Poland  had  been  freed  from  their  de- 
grading yoke  within  the  borders  of  the  newly  founded 
Grand  Duchy  of  Warsaw." 

Still,  while  all  this  was  true,  it  was  unfortu- 
nately no  less  true  that  the  burden  of  war 
pressed  heavily  upon  the  shoulders  of  the  people. 
Napoleon's  obstinate  persistence  in  trying  to  ac- 
complish the  subjugation  of  Spain  was  costing 
every  year  thousands  of  valuable  lives,  sacrificed 
in  a  contest  in  which  no  one  had  any  interest. 
The  course  he  pursued  in  regard  to  Spain  was  in 
direct  contravention  of  his  true  7^dle  in  European 
poKtics.  When  the  unwillingness  of  the  people 
to  receive  Joseph  and  the  liberal  institutions 
which  he  brought  with  him  was  definitely  ascer- 
tained, there  should  have  been  an  end  of  the 
whole  matter.  Moreover,  if  Napoleon  was  to 
prosecute  the  war  at  all,  he  certainly  should  not 
have  delegated  such  a  difficult  task  to  his  lieu- 
tenants. Had  he  in  1810  or  1811  gone  to  Spain 
himself,  he  would  have  probably  driven  out  the 
English  and  subdued  the  country.  As  it  was, 
the  jealousies  and  limited  powers  of  the  king 
and  the  marshals  gave  Wellington  opportunities 
of  which  he  never  failed  to  make  good  use.  He 
was  a  better  general  than  any  of  the  marshals 
sent  against  him,  Massena  possibly  excepted, 
and  he  played  his  cards  admirably.  Talavera, 
Busaco,  Torres  Vedras,  Salamanca,  Vittoria, 
illustrate  his  varied  military  talents. 

Besides  the  annual  drain  of  men  necessitated 


MOSCOW   TO  ELBA.  207 

by  the  Spanish  war,  there  had  now  come  upon 
the  populations  of  the  Empire  the  terrible  catas- 
trophe of  the  Russian  campaign.  Such  calami- 
ties do  a  great  deal  to  dispose  people  to  listen  to 
appeals  for  a  change  of  government. 

Then,  all  the  while,  was  the  unintermitted 
hostility  of  England,  showing  its  dejDlorable  ef- 
fects no  less  in  the  distress  produced  by  the  con- 
tinental system  than  by  the  encouragement  and 
assistance  which  she  afforded  to  the  allied  pow- 
ers of  the  continent,  without  which  they  could 
not  have  continued  the  struggle.  The  entire 
cessation  of  foreign  trade  for  so  long  a  period 
was  getting  to  be  felt  as  a  grievance  well-nigh 
intolerable.  Maintaining  this  policy  after  expe- 
rience had  abundantly  shown  that  the  English 
aristocracy  had  the  power  and  the  determination 
to  carry  on  the  war,  in  face  of  the  disastrous 
effects  which  the  continental  system  had  on  the 
commercial  and  manufacturing  interests  of  the 
English  people,  was  another  of  Napoleon's  mis- 
takes. Had  Napoleon  in  1813  retired  from  the 
contest  in  Spain,  he  could  have  availed  himself, 
for  the  campaign  about  to  open  in  Germany,  of 
a  very  large  army  of  veteran  troops,  and  could 
have  spared  France  and  her  dependencies  the 
great  sacrifices  which  he  demanded  and  which 
they  so  generously  made.  Had  he,  before  call- 
ing upon  the  Empire  to  put  forth  its  strength 
again  in  another  war,  repealed  the  continental 
blockade,  frankly   announcing  its  failure   as  a 


208  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

war  measure,  he  would  have  done  much  to  rec- 
oncile the  people  to  the  really  necessary  step  of 
a  new  campaign  in  Germany.  He  would  thus 
have  shown  to  France  and  Holland,  Italy  and 
western  Germany,  with  the  clearness  and  point 
which  the  crisis  demanded,  the  real  nature  of  the 
impending  contest.  Stripped  of  the  two  most 
unfortunate  accessories  of  the  Spanish  war  and 
the  continental  system,  the  question  was,  whether 
the  old  rcfjime  should  be  restored  throughout 
western  Europe  under  the  lead  of  the  Russian 
autocrat  and  the  Prussian  king.  Had  this  sin- 
gle issue  been  clearly  offered,  and  had  Napo- 
leon, recognizing  the  gravity  of  the  situation, 
devoted  himself  to  the  task  thus  presented,  and 
only  to  that,  the  Empire  would  easily  have 
maintained  itself  against  the  coalition. 

The  new  grand  army,  organized  to  take  the 
place  of  the  one  that  had  perished  in  Russia, 
numbered  some  270,000  men.  It  was  no  doubt 
organized  as  well  as  an  army  can  be  organized 
in  three  months,  but  that  is  not  saying  much. 
The  skeletons  of  the  regiments  were  indeed  com- 
posed of  old  soldiers.  When,  as  frequently  hap- 
pened, the  survivors  of  the  Russian  campaign 
did  not  number  enough  for  this  purpose,  veter- 
ans from  regiments  serving  in  Spain  or  elsewhere 
were  imported.  The  list  of  officers  and  non-com- 
missioned officers  being  thus  filled,  with,  in  most 
cases,  a  certain  number  of  private  soldiers  drawn 
from  the  regimental  depots   at  home,  the  con- 


MOSCOW  TO  ELBA.  209 

scription  furnished  the  rest  of  the  rank  and  file. 
The  army  was  to  be  ready  by  the  middle  of 
April,  and  it  is  easy  to  see  that  the  mass  of  the 
private  soldiers  must  have  had  very  insufficient 
instruction.  Napoleon  himself  specially  pre- 
scribed the  tactics  which  were  to  be  taught  to 
the  recruits.  Besides  the  manual  of  arms,  a  few 
simple  manoeuvres,  such  as  forming  square  to  re- 
sist cavalry  and  the  like,  were  to  occupy  all  their 
attention  in  the  few  weeks  allotted  for  drill. 
The  Guard  was  reconstituted  entirely  from  vet- 
eran soldiers,  largely  taken  from  regiments  which 
had  not  served  in  Russia,  but  it  numbered  less 
than  20,000  men.  An  extraordinary  amount  of 
artillery  accompanied  the  army.  Napoleon  recog- 
nizing the  fact  that  the  presence  of  a  battery  is 
a  great  moral  support  to  raw  infantry.  Cavalry 
was  lacking ;  but  some  good  troops  were  brought 
from  Spain. 

During  the  winter  and  early  spring  the  French 
forces  under  the  Viceroy  had  retired  before  the 
enemy  from  step  to  step,  until  in  April,  1813, 
they  were  on  the  banks  of  the  Elbe.  Saxony 
had  been  evacuated,  and  the  allies  were  endeav- 
oring to  secure  its  adhesion  in  the  crusade 
against  Napoleon.  The  attitude  of  Austria  was 
equivocal. 

Suddenly,  in  the  last  days  of  April,  the  Em- 
peror appeared  at  the  head  of  the  new  army,  and 
marched  at  once  on  Leipsic.  With  an  audacity 
which   disclosed   a  very  different   temper   from 

14 


210  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

that  whicli  prevailed  in  the  Prussian  army  seven 
years  before,  the  alKes  attacked  Napoleon  on 
the  2d  of  May,  on  the  great  plain  between 
Lutzen  and  Leipsic.  But  after  a  sanguinary 
contest  they  were  compelled  to  retire,  and  Napo- 
leon in  a  few  days  entered  Dresden.  Following 
up  his  advantage,  the  Emperor  came  up  with  the 
allied  forces  at  Bautzen  near  the  Austrian  fron- 
tier. Here  the  enemy  had  taken  a  strong  posi- 
tion. Napoleon  now  had  his  troops  all  in  hand. 
On  the  21st  of  May  he  attacked  the  alHes  in 
front,  and  sent  Ney  with  a  large  corps  to  turn 
their  right  flank.  The  operation  was  on  the 
w^hole  successful.  Owing,  however,  to  the  neces- 
sarily isolated  character  of  the  movement  pre- 
scribed to  Ney,  and  probably  also  to  the  fact 
that  he  felt  that  he  could  not  count  with  cer- 
tainty upon  his  inexperienced  troops,  that  officer 
did  not  dare  to  avail  himself  fully  of  his  oppor- 
tunity, and  the  results  of  the  battle  were  by  no 
means  what  they  might  have  been. 

Thus  far,  however.  Napoleon  had  accomplished 
quite  as  much  as  he  could  reasonably  have  ex- 
pected. The  allied  invasion  of  the  Empire  had 
been  checked ;  the  Russian  and  Prussian  armies 
had  been  defeated  and  driven  back.  Napoleon 
had  a  large  superiority  of  force.  It  was  plain 
that  if  Austria  remained  neutral,  the  new  coali- 
tion was  doomed. 

But   Austria  recognized  to   the  full  the  ad- 
v^antage  she  possessed.     Napoleon  was  at  that 


MOSCOW  TO  ELBA.  211 

time  in  no  condition  to  figlit  all  the  three  powers 
together.  His  army  was  too  small  and  too 
poorly  disciplined  for  any  such  task  as  that. 
Hence  the  Austrian  cabinet  felt  that  they  could 
exact  a  price  for  the  neutrality  of  Austria.  It 
was  not  an  exorbitant  price  ;  it  was,  substan- 
tially, the  restoration  of  what  had  been  taken 
from  Austria  in  Poland,  Illyria,  and  Germany  as 
a  consequence  of  her  disastrous  campaign  of 
1809.  But  to  Napoleon  these  demands  seemed 
most  unwarranted.  The  treaty  of  Vienna  had 
not  been  broken.  France  had  o^iven  Austria  no 
ground  of  offence.  Metternich  did  not  pretend 
there  was  any  casus  belli.  He  simply  said : 
"  We  are  strong,  stronger  than  you  suppose  ;  we 
want  these  provinces  back  ;  if  you  do  not  give 
them  up  we  shall  join  your  enemies,  and  we  shall 
be  too  many  for  you."  Such  language  was  in- 
tolerable to  Napoleon.  He  regarded  it  as  an  out 
and  out  threat,  —  that  it  assumed  that  he,  NajDO- 
leon,  could  be  intimidated  into  resigning  terri- 
tory which  had  become  his  by  valid  treaties. 
To  his  mind  the  attitude  of  Russia  and  Prussia 
was  far  more  intelligible.  He  recognized  that 
they  had  good  grounds  for  hostility.  He  could 
understand  and  appreciate  their  position.  Rus- 
sia had  her  invasion  to  avenge.  Prussia  since 
J^na  had  never  been  treated  as  an  equal ;  she 
naturally  desired  to  recover  her  position  as  a 
great  power.  But  that  Austria,  with  whom  he 
had  so  recently  been  connected  by  a  marriage 


212  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

alliance,  should  take  advantag-e  of  his  misfor- 
tunes, and,  without  any  allegation  even  of  a 
breach  of  good  faith  on  his  part,  should  exact  a 
price  for  not  joining  in  the  crusade  against  him, 
this  was  to  him  irritating  to  the  last  degree.  It 
was  a  repetition  of  Austria's  conduct  in  1809, 
when,  without  the  least  excuse,  she  attacked  him 
simply  because  he  was  embarrassed  in  Spain. 

Mortifying,  however,  as  it  might   have  been 
for  Napoleon  to  yield  to  such  demands  as  these, 
it  was  clearly  for  the  interest  of  his  Empire  to 
make  these  concessions.     After  all,  it  was  natural 
that   Austrian    statesmen    should    embrace   the 
first  opportunity  of  recovering  the  seaports  on 
the  Adriatic.     Here,  in  all  probability,  lay  the 
stress  of  the  Austrian  demands.     Had  Napoleon 
yielded  the  Illyrian  provinces,  he  could  without 
much    doubt    have    arranged    everythiuo-   else. 
Then,  Austria's  neutrality  secured,  the  defeat  of 
the  Russian  and  Prussian   coalition  was  morally 
certam.     Russia  had  by  no  means  recovered  so 
fully  as  France  had  from  the  losses  of  the  pre- 
ceding year.     Prussia's  new  organization  had  so 
far  yielded  but  a  moderate  army.     The  chances 
were  two  to  one  that  by  the  1st  of  September 
Napoleon   could  occupy  Berhn,  reheve  Dantzic, 
and  reenter  Warsaw. 

Instead  of  taking  this  course,  so  manifestly 
demanded  by  ordinary  prudence  as  well  as  by  a 
sense  of  pubhc  duty,  he  allowed  his  indignation 
at  the  attitude  of  Austria  to  direct  his  poHcy 


MOSCOW  TO  ELBA.  213 

He  accepted,  indeed,  the  offer  of  mediation  which 
Austria  made,  and  agreed  to  the  armistice  which 
she  proposed.  In  fact,  he  did  not  feel  himself 
strong  enough  in  May  to  withstand  a  coalition  of 
the  three  great  powers.  But  he  continued  his 
preparations  for  war,  in  the  hope  that  Austria, 
when  later  in  the  season  she  came  to  see  the 
maofnitude  of  his  armaments,  would  recede  from 
her  selfish  attitude,  and  keep  the  peace  without 
being  paid  for  it.  He  also  calculated  that,  if 
she  should  act  the  contrary  part,  he  would,  by 
the  time  the  armistice  terminated,  have  a  force 
adequate  to  all  emergencies. 

Hence,  instead  of  buying  off  Austria  by  mak- 
ing the  moderate  concessions  which  she  de- 
manded as  the  price  of  her  neutrality,  and  finish- 
ing the  contest  as  speedily  as  possible  with  the 
enfeebled  and  discouraged  forces  of  the  Czar 
and  the  King,  he  chose  to  tempt  fortune  by  en- 
gaging in  an  unequal  contest  against  the  three 
nations  combined.  Of  the  certain  losses  and 
miseries  of  such  a  gigantic  struggle,  he  appar- 
ently took  no  heed.  Of  defeat,  and  of  the  dis- 
astrous consequences  of  defeat  to  the  popula- 
tions who  had,  under  his  guidance,  begun  a  new 
career  in  political  and  social  life,  he  took  his 
chance.  To  his  mind,  it  is  true,  there  was  small 
probability  of  his  being  beaten ;  and  with  Aus- 
terlitz,  Jena,  and  Friedland  to  look  back  upon, 
who  can  wonder  at  his  feeling  ?  Yet  it  is  al' 
most  incomprehensible  that  he  should  have  left 


214  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

out  of  the  account,  as  he  certainly  did,  all  the 
considerations  which  made  a  speedy  termination 
of  the  war  most  desirable,  —  the  exhaustion  of 
France  and  her  allies,  the  discontent  arising  from 
the  constant  conscriptions,  the  suffering  caused 
by  the  blockade,  the  miseries  caused  by  such 
tremendous  wars,  and  above  all  the  dispropor- 
tionate importance  to  the  French  Empire  of  re- 
taining the  Illyrian  provinces  compared  with  hav- 
ing Austria  added  to  the  coalition.  Nothing  but 
an  inordinate  reliance  on  the  use  of  force,  a  pro- 
fessional soldier's  forgetfulness  of  the  blessings 
of  peace,  a  gambler's  wilHnguess  to  risk  every- 
thing on  the  issue  of  a  battle,  and  a  wholly  in- 
adequate appreciation  of  the  importance  of  the 
preservation  of  the  Empire,  and  of  the  conse- 
quent duty  of  preventing  any  dangerous  com- 
bination against  its  integrity,  can  account  for 
Napoleon's  course  at  this  juncture. 

When  the  armistice  terminated  in  the  middle 
of  August,  Austria  had  joined  the  coalition. 
Napoleon  had  indeed  largely  increased  his  army. 
He  had  also  been  able  to  improve  somewhat  the 
drill  and  discipHne  of  his  troops.  But  the  army 
was  a  poor  one.  The  men  were  too  young  and 
too  green.  There  were  a  great  many  inexperi- 
enced officers.  Nevertheless  Napoleon,  as  usual, 
despised  his  enemies.  His  own  mind  was  as 
fertile  as  ever  in  plans,  and  he  looked  for  great 
results. 

You  all   know  how  fatally  his   expectations 


MOSCOW  TO  ELBA.  215 

were  disappointed.  I  have  not  time  to  tell  how 
the  brilliant  success  at  Dresden  which  followed 
close  on  the  termination  of  the  armistice,  was 
succeeded  by  the  four  crushing  defeats  of  Van- 
damme,  Oudinot,  Macdonald,  and  Ney,  and  how 
the  remainder  of  the  army,  under  Napoleon  him- 
self, sadly  diminished  in  strength  and  confidence, 
and  largely  outnumbered  by  its  foes,  was  de- 
feated and  discomfited  in  the  o-reat  battle  of 
Leipsic,  and  driven  across  the  Rhine. 

But  perhaps  you  do  not  all  of  you  know  that 
Napoleon  was  so  insanely  confident  of  success 
that  he  had  at  the  time  of  the  battle  of  Leipsic 
nearly  200,000  men  in  the  various  fortresses  and 
fortified  towns  of  Germany,  the  larger  part  of 
whom  could,  had  he  so  ordered,  have  been  fight- 
ing under  his  eye  in  that  tremendous  struggle. 
Had  they  been  there,  the  result  might  very  pos- 
sibly have  been  different.  It  is  true  that  if  Na- 
poleon's plans  of  campaign  had  turned  out  well, 
these  garrisons  would  have  secured  for  him  all 
the  strategic  points  in  northern  Germany.  But 
to  deprive  himself  of  the  services  of  such  a  mass 
of  troops  when  the  fate  of  his  Empire  was 
trembling  in  the  balance,  only  that  success,. if  he 
won  it,  might  be  more  decisive,  is  such  reckless 
and  insensate  conduct  that  it  is  impossible  to 
speak  of  it  with  moderation.  When  he  crossed 
the  Rhine  also,  he  left  large  garrisons  in  the 
important  places,  so  that  when  he  returned  in 
the  spring  he  might  find  them  ready  to  his  hand. 


216  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

This  is  the  conduct  of  a  gambler.  The  crisis 
was  indeed  a  grave  one ;  it  needed  that  all  the 
available  resources  of  the  Empire  should  be  con- 
centrated. Yet  Napoleon  scattered  them.  In 
Spain  and  northern  Germany  were  armies  that 
would  have  amply  sufficed  to  guard  the  Rhine 
frontier  from  invasion.  But  to  Napoleon's  mind 
such  extreme  measures  were  uncalled  for.  It 
was  impossible,  he  felt,  that  he  should  not  suc- 
ceed, in  the  end,  in  beating  Schwartzenberg  and 
Bliicher,  and  then,  of  what  immense  advantage 
would  be  the  possession  of  Hamburg  and  Dres- 
den and  Magdeburg  and  Dantzic  ! 

Nothing  can  show  more  clearly  than  this  how 
thoroughly  he  regarded  the  whole  thing  as  a 
game ;  a  game  of  war,  to  be  sure,  but  still  a 
game ;  and  how  completely  he  lost  the  character 
of  monarch,  of  the  defender  of  the  integrity  of 
the  states  composing  the  Empire,  in  that  of  a 
mere  general  of  an  army,  and  a  most  recklessly 
imprudent  general  too.  The  manifest  want  of 
serious  appreciation  of  his  real  position  during 
the  years  1813  and  1814  seems  to  indicate  in 
Napoleon  a  deplorable  and  radical  defect  in  mind 
and  character.  It  does  not  seem  to  me  to  show 
what  we  call  moral  perversity,  so  much  as  an 
inability  to  grasp  the  essential  conditions  of  the 
problem,  which  in  any  ordinary  man  of  the  world 
we  should  be  surprised  to  find,  combined  with  a 
total  deficiency  in  that  sobriety  and  seriousness 
with  which  a  man  of  strong  character  deals  with 


MOSCOW  TO  ELBA.  217 

great  emergencies.  He  seems  to  have  been  inca- 
pable of  listening  to  the  dictates  of  prudence,  of 
common  sense.  Still  less  did  he  appreciate  that 
a  ruler  is,  in  a  true  and  real  sense,  a  trustee  for 
his  people;  and  that  risks,  which,  to  an  individ- 
ual or  to  a  soldier  of  fortune,  are  permissible 
enough,  are  wholly  out  of  place  when  they  put 
at  hazard  the  destinies  of  states. 

The  rest  of  our  story  is  soon  told.  Napo- 
leon's part  in  it  is  characterized  throughout  by 
an  obstinate  and  reckless  reliance  on  military 
success  as  the  only  means  of  escape  from  the 
difficulties  which  environed  him.  Peace,  and  an 
honorable  peace,  he  might  have  had  when  he 
wanted  it.  In  fact,  the  Emperor  Francis  was  far 
from  being  desirous  to  ruin  him  ;  he  was  satisfied 
with  having  regained  for  his  country  her  ancient 
predominance  in  southern  Germany  and  Italy. 
Alexander  would  have  willingly  retired  on  his 
laurels.  It  was  only  in  the  Prussian  camp  that 
the  desire  to  push  the  war  to  the  bitter  end  was 
manifested.  Thus,  after  Leipsic,  Napoleon  was 
offered  peace  on  terms  which  would  have  left 
France  bounded  by  the  Rhine,  Belgium  being 
included  in  the  French  frontier.  These  terms 
he  had  the  incredible  folly  to  reject.  He  was 
countino-  on  the  three  or  four  months  of  winter 
in  which  to  bring  out  a  new  army.  But  the 
allies  did  not  ffive  him  the  time  he  needed.  In 
January  of  ISl-I  their  armies  crossed  the  Rhine. 

Not  much,  of  course,  had  been  accomplished 


218  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

at  this  date  by  Napoleon  towards  a  reorganiza- 
tion of  his  shattered  forces.  What  little  could 
be  done  after  such  terrible  disasters  and  mistakes, 
was  certainly  done,  but  meantime  French  terri- 
tory was  being  occupied.  Not  only  were  Alsace 
and  Lorraine  invaded,  but  on  the  southern  fron- 
tier also.  Lord  Wellington  had  crossed  the  Pyr- 
enees. 

Of  the  resolute,  daring,  brilliant  fight  that 
Napoleon  made  in  the  winter  and  early  spring 
of  1814,  —  of  Brienne,  Champ  Aubert,  Montmi- 
rail,  Montereau,  —  I  have  not  the  time  to  speak. 
Nor  would  it  be  possible  for  us  to  follow  the 
complicated  movements  of  this  remarkable  cam- 
paign in  a  lecture.  Admire,  however,  as  much 
as  we  may,  the  indomitable  spirit  of  the  man, 
his  unfaltering  nerve,  his  clear  judgment,  his 
untiring  activity,  his  great  skill,  his  daring  cour- 
age, we  cannot  but  recognize  that  during  this 
whole  period  he  was  playing  the  part  of  a  mere 
military  man,  he  was  totally  ignoring  the  duties 
of  a  ruler  of  states.  It  is  true  that  the  Great 
Frederic  was  at  times,  during  the  Seven  Years 
War,  well-nigh  as  hard  pushed  as  Napoleon,  and 
that  no  thought  of  giving  way  ever  entered 
his  iron  soul ;  and  he  finally  succeeded  in  hold- 
ing his  own.  Such  an  example  may  well  have 
had  an  influence  in  shaping  the  line  of  con- 
duct which  Napoleon  proposed  to  himself.  Be 
that  as  it  may,  it  remains  true,  that  during  this 
very  campaign  in  France,  offers  of  peace  were 


MOSCOW  TO  ELBA.  219 

repeatedly  made  which  would  at  any  rate  have 
saved  France  from  the  terrible  misfortune  of  hav- 
ing her  form  of  government  settled  for  her  by 
her  enemies,  a  misfortune  which  was  destined  to 
bear  its  bitter  fruit  to  succeeding  generations  in 
revolution  after  revolution.     But  Napoleon  had 
chosen  his  role,  and  he  stuck  to  it.     If  fortune 
favored  his  military  combinations,  he  would  come 
out  of  the  contest  with  flying  colors ;  he  would 
not  have  compromised  the  honor  of  the  flag,  nor 
have  yielded  a  foot  of  soil  which  France  had  ever 
owned ;  if  the  fates  were  against  him,  it  would 
be  said  of  him  that  he  had  made  a  brave  and 
skilful  defence,  and  that   France,  having  been 
overpowered  by  numbers,  had  not  lost  her  proud 
name.     Suffice  it  to  say,  that  all  that  a  military 
man  could  do  to  defend  his  country  against  in- 
vasion with  the  utterly  inadequate  force,  which, 
owing  to  his  reckless  and  insane  folly  in  failing 
to  withdraw  his  garrisons  from  Germany  and  his 
armies  from  Spain,  was  all  that  remained  to  him 
to  use  against  the  allies,  was  done.     The  question, 
however,   being   in   Napoleon's  hands   a  purely 
military  one,  and  all  his  skill   not   sufficing  to 
supply  his  woful  lack  of  resources,  the  inevitable 
termination  at  length  came,  more  unexpectedly    ' 
to  him,  probably,  than  to  any  one  else.     Paris 
surrendered  on  the  30th  of  March,  and  the  war 
was  over.     The  Empire  of  Napoleon  had  fallen. 
It  only  remained  for  the  conquerors  to  decide 
what  was  to  become  of  France  and  of  Napoleon 
himself. 


LECTURE  VI. 

THE    RETURN    FROM    ELBA. 

It  is  April,  1814.  The  allied  armies  are 
quartered  in  Paris.  Bliicher  and  Schwartzen- 
berg  and  Barclay  de  Tolly,  generals  whose  names 
the  Parisians  have  hitherto  connected  only  with 
the  far-off  battlefields  of  Jena  and  Lutzen  and 
Dresden  and  Smolensk  and  Borodino,  may  now 
be  seen  riding  in  the  Champs  Elysees  and  vis- 
iting their  camps  in  the  Bois  de  Boulogne.  The 
good  people  of  France  are  indignant  with  the 
Emperor  for  having  permitted  by  his  reckless 
conduct  such  a  retribution  as  this,  and  no  won- 
der. The  allied  sovereigns,  for  the  Czar  Alex- 
ander and  the  King  of  Prussia  are  with  their 
troops,  are  beset  with  suggestions  and  advice 
from  the  partisans  of  the  old  monarchy.  They 
are  assured  that  France  is  weary  of  Napoleon 
and  his  endless  wars,  and  desires  nothing  better 
than  a  return  to  the  old,  sound,  conservative 
regime  of  the  ancient  dynasty. 

In  a  certain  sense  there  was  a  great  deal  of 
truth  in  this.  All  classes  were  tired  of  war. 
Everybody  felt    the   humiliation   of  defeat   and 


THE  RETURN  FROM  ELBA.  221 

invasion.  There  never  had  been  any  interest  in 
the  Spanish  war,  and  feAv  had  ever  been  hardy 
enough  to  justify  it.  The  war  wdth  Russia  was 
generally  considered  as  the  cause  of  the  present 
calamities,  and  the  fact  that  it  was,  to  say  the 
least  of  it,  quite  as  much  the  work  of  Alexander 
as  of  Napoleon,  was  not  known ;  to  all  appear- 
ance it  had  looked  like  a  wanton  invasion  of  a 
country  with  which  France  might  have  been  and 
ought  to  have  been  at  peace.  In  addition  to 
the  condemnation  of  Napoleon's  course  in  respect 
to  Spain  and  Russia,  there  had  now  come  to  be 
felt  the  most  bitter  indio-nation  at  his  reckless- 
ness  and  obstinacy  in  refusing  the  honorable  and 
advantageous  offers  of  peace  which  had  been 
made  to  him  during  the  year  that  had  passed. 
In  short,  there  could  be  no  doubt  that  the  coun- 
try condemned  the  foreign  policy  which  Napo- 
leon had  latterly  pursued,  which,  as  people  justly 
thought,  had  led  directly  to  the  humiliation  of 
France. 

It  was,  however,  no  less  true,  that,  apart  from 
this,  the  people  were  content  with  the  existing 
government.  The  great  body  of  the  middle  and 
lower  classes  feared  and  detested  a  return  of  the 
Bourbons  and  the  ancient  noblesse.  The  army 
was  still  devoted  to  the  Emperor.  The  upper 
classes  felt  that  they  had  more  to  lose  than  to 
gain  by  a  change  of  dynasty.  Only  the  fanatics 
in  the  cause  of  divine  right  really  demanded  Louis 
XVIII.  as  the  logical  sequence  of  the  fall  of  the 


222  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

usurper  and  the  close  of  the  revokitionary  period. 
But  this  party  was  naturally  in  an  hour  like  this 
the  most  jubilant  and  the  most  noisy.  Moreover, 
it  had  the  ear  of  the  great  personages  whose 
word  was  to  determine  what  was  to  be  done. 

In  an  evil  hour  Alexander  listened  to  their 
suggestions.  He  decided,  and  his  allies  readily 
acquiesced,  that  the  powers  would  not  treat  with 
Napoleon.  It  was  a  most  unjust,  a  most  unwar- 
ranted, and  a  most  unfortunate  decision.  What 
was  it  to  them  what  should  be  the  government 
of  France  ?  Far  better  would  it  have  been  if 
they  had  confined  themselves  to  exacting  from 
Napoleon  such  a  peace  as  they  had  a  right  to  ex- 
act, and  had  then  left  him  to  settle  his  accounts 
as  best  he  might  with  the  French  people.  He 
would  in  that  event  have  had  to  stand  the  natu- 
ral consequences  of  his  mistakes,  of  his  perver- 
sity, of  his  blindness  to  the  true  interests  of  his 
country,  of  his  wilful  and  obstinate  preference  of 
a  military  solution  of  the  difficulties  which  had 
surrounded  him  to  wiser  and  more  peaceful  meth- 
ods of  escape.  By  thus  distinguishing  him  from 
the  country  which  he  represented,  they  exhibited 
their  mortal  fear  lest  his  genius  might  some  day 
reassert  itself  and  restore  to  France  some  portion 
at  least  of  her  former  glory.  They  forced  him 
to  abdicate,  thus  freeing  him  at  once  from  the 
burdens  and  difficulties,  which  as  a  disappointed 
and  defeated  monarch  he  would  have  had  to  en* 
counter  at  every  step  of  the  new  path  of  quiet- 


THE  RETURN  FROM  ELBA.  223 

ness  and  moderation  in  which  alone  it  was  possi- 
ble at  that  time  for  France  to  walk.  But  to  meet 
and  to  bear  these  difficulties  and  burdens  could 
not  but  have  been  wholesome  both  for  France 
and  her  Emperor.  The  process  of  readjustment, 
of  reconciliation,  would  have  been  doubtless  a 
disagreeable  process,  but  it  would  have  been  a 
normal  and  necessary  one,  and  there  was  no  rea- 
son why  the  alhed  powers  should  have  under- 
taken to  prevent  its  taking  place  by  arbitrarily 
rehe^ang  Napoleon  from  the  cares  and  duties 
and  responsibilities  of  continuing  to  govern  a 
state  to  which  his  own  folly  and  obstinacy  had 
brought  so  many  calamities. 

Then,  if  Napoleon  was  to  be  ignored,  there 
was  nothing  else  to  do  but  to  restore  the  Bour- 
bons. But  what  a  responsibility  was  involved  in 
taking  this  course  !  It  was  more  than  twenty 
years  since  the  Bourbons  had  been  dethroned, 
and  the  king  and  queen  put  to  death.  During 
that  time,  the  French  people  had  lived  under 
and  become  profoundly  attached  to  a  system  of 
things  which  was  in  all  respects  the  opposite  of 
that  known  as  the  old  regime.  The  differences 
between  the  new  system  and  the  old,  as  I  have 
pointed  out  before,  were  fundamental.  The 
basis  of  the  one  was  equality,  of  the  other,  privi- 
lege. The  new  system  had  been  accepted  by  the 
French  people.  Embodied  in  the  Code  Napo- 
leon, it  had  connected  itself  with  all  the  affairs 
of  life,  and  had  regulated  and  governed  the  re- 


224  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

lations  of  the  shop,  the  factory,  the  family,  and 
the  state  for  more  than  twenty  years.  It  is 
true,  no  one  at  this  moment  proposed  to  abol- 
ish the  Code.  But  if  the  Bourbons  were  to  be 
restored,  the  principle  of  divine  right  and  of 
privilege  must  come  back  with  them.  And  who 
could  tell  what  revolutionary  catastrophes  might 
not  be  the  result  of  thus  forcibly  reintroducing  a 
principle  which  had  been  so  deliberately  and  for 
so  long  a  time  rejected  ? 

The  allied  sovereigns  took  this  responsibility 
of  chana;inof  the  pfovernment  of  France.  One 
recommendation  that  this  course  had  was,  un- 
doubtedly, that  it  appeared  to  terminate  the  long 
conflict  that,  beginning  with  the  French  Revolu- 
tion in  1789,  had  gone  on  under  Napoleon,  be- 
tween the  old  and  the  new  order  of  things,  by 
the  definitive,  the  complete,  triumph  of  the  cause 
of  legitimacy  and  of  privilege. 

The  restoration  of  the  Bourbons  necessarily 
involved  the  exile  of  Napoleon.  The  govern- 
ment never  existed  that  could  have  put  up  with 
Napoleon  Bonaparte  as  a  subject,  a  mere  private 
citizen.  For  him  to  remain  in  France  was  mani- 
festly impossible.  There  was  nothing  left  but 
exile.  And  it  must  be  admitted  that  the  victori- 
ous powers  treated  their  fallen  antagonist  with 
consideration  when  they  assigned  to  him  the  lit- 
tle island  of  Elba  as  the  place  of  his  residence. 
It  was,  however,  as  any  one  might  have  seen,  a 
very  unwise  thing  to  do,  for  at  Elba  the  faUen 


THE  RETURN  FROM  ELBA.  225 

Emperor  could  receive  all  the  European  news  as 
easily  as  could  the  Emperor  Francis  at  Vienna 
or  the  Czar  Alexander  at  St.  Petersburg.  And 
it  ought  to  have  been  considered,  that  it  was  go- 
ing to  prove  impossible  for  the  Bourbons  fully  to 
satisfy  the  people  of  France.  How  could  the 
exiles  of  twenty  years  be  expected  to  become  rec- 
onciled to  the  new  order  of  things  to  which  all 
Frenchmen  but  the  exiles  had  become  irrevoca- 
bly attached  ?  How  were  the  returning  nobility 
to  be  treated  ?  Were  the  lands,  which  had  been 
forfeited  years  ago,  and  which  had  since  passed 
from  purchaser  to  purchaser  and  from  father  to 
son,  to  be  restored  to  their  original  owners? 
How  was  the  army  to  be  treated?  How  were 
the  Prince  of  Conde  and  the  Duke  of  Berry 
likely  to  get  on  with  the  Duke  of  Elchingen  and 
the  Prince  of  Essling?  The  future  of  France 
was  full  of  doubt.  Not  the  least  element  in  this 
uncertainty  consisted  in  the  well-known  charac- 
teristic of  the  Bourbon  family,  that  in  all  its 
twenty  years  of  exile,  it  had  learned  nothing  and 
had  forgotten  nothing.  And  in  any  of  the 
epochs  of  dissatisfaction  which  were  morally  cer- 
tain to  occur,  how  easy  would  it  be  for  Napoleon 
to  return  from  Elba? 

Nevertheless,  in  spite  of  these  ugly  probabili- 
ties, to  Elba  was  Napoleon  sent,  and  Louis  XVIH. 
commenced  his  reign.  At  first,  as  was  natural, 
everything  looked  well  for  the  new  monarch. 
The  sense  of  relief  from  the  interminable  wars 

15 


226  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

counted,  of  course,  for  much  in  this  happy  pros- 
pect. Then  the  restoration  of  peace  brought 
with  it  in  some  quarters,  at  any  rate,  the  restora- 
tion of  trade,  and  an  influx  of  foreign  travellers. 
The  new  monarch  was  a  gracious  and  well-mean- 
ing man.  He  yielded  his  own  prejudices  so  far 
as  to  give  his  people  a  parliamentary  constitu- 
tion. He  early  saw  the  impracticability  of  sat- 
isfying the  demands  of  the  extreme  royalists. 
Sooner  than  disturb  existing  titles,  he  diminished 
the  state  lands  by  grants  to  the  needy  nobility. 
Doubtless  he  tried  his  best. 

But  the  position  was  one  which  he  never 
should  have  been  called  upon  to  occupy.  It  was 
impossible  for  any  man,  no  matter  what  his  abil- 
ity or  his  good  purposes  might  be,  to  fill  the 
throne  of  France  at  that  time  with  satisfaction 
to  the  people  of  France.  It  does  not  make  us 
view  the  reckless  conduct  of  Napoleon  in  any 
more  favorable  light  certainly,  when  we  consider 
that  it  was  due  so  largely  to  his  folly  that  the 
normal  political  development  of  France  was  thus 
arrested,  and  its  course  turned,  to  a  greater  or 
less  extent,  into  the  discarded  channels  of  eigh- 
teenth century  politics.  Yet  so  it  was.  The 
king  might  try  conscientiously  to  fulfil  his  duty, 
but,  do  what  he  would,  the  fact  that  he  and 
those  about  him  represented  ideas  and  principles 
which  France  had  long  ago  rejected,  that  they 
were  utterly  out  of  sympathy  with  the  views  and 
aims  which  were  so  dear  to  the  great  mass  of  the 


THE  RETURN  FROM  ELBA.  227 

French  people,  could  not  but  make  it  impossible 
for  Louis  to  obtain  a  hold  upon  the  national 
aifection  and  esteem. 

Naturally  enough,  the  army  was  especially 
dissatisfied  with  the  new  government.  The 
royal  dukes  ranked  everybody  else,  of  course ; 
and  in  addition  to  the  irritation  which  all 
Frenchmen  felt  at  distinction  of  any  kind  being 
the  perquisite  of  mere  birth  was  the  peculiar 
grievance  always  felt  by  military  men  when  offi- 
cers who  have  never  seen  the  face  of  the  enemy 
are  placed  above  the  veterans  of  many  cam- 
paigns. Any  one  in  the  least  acquainted  with 
the  standard  of  feeling  on  such  subjects  which 
prevails  among  military  men  the  world  over  can 
understand  that  it  was  impossible  that  the  sol- 
diers of  Napoleon  should  not  have  felt  the  tran- 
sition to  the  regime  of  the  Bourbons  irksome 
and  well-nigh  insupportable.  And  this  may  well 
have  happened  without  any  special  fault  on  the 
part  of  Louis  or  his  ministers.  In  addition, 
however,  to  these  general  causes  of  dissatisfac- 
tion, there  were  others.  The  reduction  of  the 
army,  a  measure  really  unavoidable,  could  not 
but  render  the  government  unpopular  with  those 
officers  who  were  thus  summarily  discharged 
from  service.  Then  there  was  more  or  less  of 
suspicion  of  and  hostility  to  the  old  and  tried 
chiefs,  which  was  fiercely  resented  not  only  by 
them  but  by  the  army  generally. 

During  the  year  1814,  some  200,000  French 


228  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

soldiers  returned  to  France  from  foreign  for- 
tresses and  garrisons.  These  men  could  not  be- 
lieve that  the  Emperor  could  have  been  over- 
thrown without  the  intervention  of  traitors. 
They  knew  nothing  of  the  share  which  Napo- 
leon's obstinacy  and  recklessness  had  had  in 
bringing  about  the  deplorable  catastrophe. 
They  were  above  all  things  anxious  for  another 
trial  of  strength  between  France  and  her  ene- 
mies. 

The  new  government  also  made  the  mistake 
of  interfering  with  the  judiciary.  It  undertook 
on  various  pretexts  to  get  rid  of  a  great  many 
judges,  and  to  fill  their  places  by  men  belong- 
ing to  the  reactionary  party.  The  suspicions  of 
people  were  aroused  lest  the  well  understood 
laws  of  the  land  should  be  administered  in  a 
sense  contrary  to  their  plain  meaning. 

The  returned  emigrants,  whose  services  to  the 
royal  family  had  given  them  a  ready  access  to 
the  throne,  were  naturally  thoroughly  distrusted 
by  the  nation,  and  they  did  not  seek  to  diminish 
this  feeling  by  their  moderation  either  of  lan- 
guage or  behavior.  They  loudly  urged  the  un- 
doing of  all  the  work  of  the  Revolution.  They 
wantonly  revived  the  memory  of  ancient  ani- 
mosities. Among  other  pieces  of  folly,  they 
persuaded  the,  king  to  ennoble  the  family  of 
Georges  Cadoudal,  who  had  suffered  death  in 
1804  for  having  conspired  against  the  life  of  the 
First  Consul.     They  even  undertook  to  disturb 


THE  RETURN  FROM  ELBA.  229 

the  settlement  with  the  Church  effected  by  the 
Concordat.  They  persecuted  the  bishops  who 
had  accepted  that  wise  measure  and  had  for  ten 
years  faithfully  acted  under  it.  They  gave  the 
word  to  those  priests,  returned  emigrants  and 
others,  of  whom  there  were  many  in  France,  in 
whose  weak  minds  the  cause  of  the  Church  was 
inextricably  confused  with  the  cause  of  the  Bour- 
bons, to  preach  a  crusade  against  liberal  ideas 
in  politics,  and  to  urge  upon  the  government 
the  re-adoption  of  the  discarded  system  of  intol- 
erance in  matters  of  faith  and  worship.  In  fact 
nothing;  was  left  undone  which  could  tend  to 
alarm  the  good  people  of  France  in  regard  to 
the  permanence  of  the  fundamental  institutions 
and  reforms,  which,  acquired  at  so  much  ex- 
pense in  the  great  Revolution,  and  consolidated 
by  Napoleon,  had  been  the  cause  and  condition 
of  so  much  prosperity  and  contentment. 

But,  I  hear  some  one  say,  Louis  XVIII. 
was  not  an  absolute  monarch,  like  Naj)oleon, 
but  a  king  whose  powers  were  in  some  sort  lun- 
ited  by  a  constitution.  He  governed  by  means 
of  a  ministry,  and  by  a  ministry  which  must 
find  its  support  in  a  Parliament.  Here  is  a 
great  improvement,  certainly,  over  the  govern- 
ment of  Napoleon.  France  ought  to  have  been 
content. 

This  criticism,  though  specious,  is  in  reality 
not  sound.  Let  us  grant  at  once  and  freely 
that  the  government  of  Louis  XVIII.  resembled 


230  THE   FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

in  its  essential  features  the  government  of  Eng- 
land ;  and  furthermore,  that  the  government  of 
England  was  a  freer  government  than  that  of 
France  under  Napoleon.  But  the  institutions 
of  Great  Britain  were  based  on  class  distinctions 
and  privileges  which  were  the  abhorrence  of 
the  French  people.  The  fundamental  thing  in 
France  was  equality  before  the  law.  If  this  be 
preserved,  most  Frenchmen  cared  little  then  and 
care  little  to-day  who  administers  the  govern- 
ment. If,  on  the  contrary,  this  is  endangered, 
France  at  once  becomes  agitated,  restless,  and 
ripe  for  revolt.  No  parliamentary  rejjresenta- 
tion  is  accepted  as  a  compensation  for  any  dis- 
turbance of  this  fundamental  principle.  The 
new  parliament  was  all  very  well,  of  course,  but 
not  having  been  evolved  naturally  in  the  course 
of  the  nation's  political  growth,  having  in  fact 
been  granted  as  a  sort  of  offset  for  the  infrac- 
tions of  the  principle  of  equality  necessarily  in- 
volved in  the  return  of  the  Bourbons,  it  was 
worth  but  little  either  to  the  royal  family  as  a 
recommendation  of  the  old  regime^  or  to  the 
French  people  as  a  means  of  political  education. 
The  difficulties  with  which  the  Bourbon  dy- 
nasty had  to  contend  were  in  truth  practically 
insuperable.  They  were  not  the  ordinary  diffi- 
culties of  all  new  governments.  Changes  like 
those  which  France  passed  through  from  1789 
to  the  establishment  of  the  Empire  in  1804  are, 
in  a  certain  real  sense,  the  results  of  a  process  of 


THE  RETURN  FROM  ELBA.  231 

evolution.  They  may,  each  successive  one  of 
them,  have  their  peculiar  difficulties,  but,  for 
the  time  being,  each  fulfils  its  natural,  though 
perhaps  transient,  work.  But  the  imposition  by 
force  upon  an  independent  nation  of  a  form  of 
government  for  which  its  political  history  has  in 
no  wise  fitted  it,  nay  even,  which  in  the  evolu- 
tion of  its  political  life  it  has  definitively  re- 
jected, is  to  lay  upon  the  administrators  of  that 
government  tasks  which  they  cannot  accomplish, 
and  to  subject  the  nation  to  a  yoke  against 
which  it  will  inevitably  rebel. 

Added  to  these  causes  which  so  profoundly 
disturbed  France  was  the  unpopularity  to  which 
the  government  was  no  doubt  undeservedly  sub- 
jected, arising  from  the  hard  terms  imposed  on 
France  by  the  allied  powers.  The  ministry  had 
done  their  best,  unquestionably  ;  for  it  was  of 
course  for  the  interest  of  the  o'overnment  to  ob- 
tain  for  France  all  the  territory  and  colonies  that 
the  allied  powers  could  be  induced  to  concede. 
But  many  of  their  reasonable  expectations  and 
demands  were  disappointed. 

Another  ground  for  discontent  existed  in  the 
unavoidable  depression  in  French  manufactur- 
ing industries,  resulting  from  throwing  open  the 
market  to  English  goods.  The  declaration  of 
peace  operated  like  a  sudden  and  total  change  in 
a  tariff,  and  brought  ruin,  or  at  least  temporary 
stagnation,  into  many  hitherto  prosperous  dis- 
tricts. 


232  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

Napoleon's  exile  had,  as  I  have  pointed  out, 
exempted  him  from  the  task,  which  by  good 
rights  should  have  fallen  upon  him,  of  standing 
up  against  these  complaints  and  criticisms,  and 
doing  his  best  to  repair  these  misfortunes.  But, 
influenced  partly  by  fear  of  his  ever  active 
sword,  and  partly  by  a  desire  to  terminate  the 
long  crusade  against  the  Revolution  and  Revolu- 
tionary principles  by  restoring  the  ancient  throne 
of  the  Bourbons  in  the  spot  where  the  Revolu- 
tion had  its  origin,  the  alhed  powers  committed 
the  mistake  of  relieving  the  fallen  Emperor 
from  the  necessity  of  facing  the  obloquy  which 
his  recent  terrible  mistakes  had  drawn  upon 
him,  of  going  on  with  the  government  of  the 
country  in  spite  of  his  diminished  prestige,  and 
of  working  out  for  France  relief  from  the  evils 
which  his  reckless  course  had  brought  upon  her. 
As  it  was,  all  the  complaints  were  laid  at  the 
door  of  Louis.  Napoleon,  in  exile,  driven  from 
his  country  by  his  country's  foes,  became  a 
greater  hero  than  ever.  To  him  all  eyes  were 
tui'ued.  Not  only  was  the  army  to  a  man  la- 
menting its  great  chief,  but  the  bulk  of  the 
people,  indignant,  amazed,  and  enraged  at  the 
steps  which  the  Bourbon  government  was  tak- 
ing in  the  direction  of  a  discarded  past,  and 
still  more  alarmed  at  the  prospect  of  the  future, 
looked  wistfully  across  the  Mediterranean  for 
the  return  of  him  who  alone  had  known  how 
both  to  curb  the  passions  of  the  Revolution  and 


THE  RETURN  FROM  ELBA.  233 

to  give  to  the  people  of  France  the  equal,  lib- 
eral, just,  and  humane  laws  which  were  the 
dearly  bought  acquisitions  of  her  great  convul- 
sions. 

Of  all  this  Napoleon  was  perfectly  cognizant. 
He  had  his  friends  everywhere  in  France.  From 
the  beirinninof  he  had  seen  that  he  would  soon 
be  wanted.  He  knew  that  every  month  would 
bringf  <rreater  difficulties  to  the  Bourbon  s^overn- 
ment.  The  only  question  was,  whether  the  time 
for  him  had  come.  Whether  he  hastened  his 
departure  by  fears  of  being  removed  to  some 
distant  place,  I  do  not  know.  Such  fears  were 
certainly  not  without  foundation.  The  allied 
powers  in  the  Congress  of  Vienna  were  debating 
whether  or  not  to  depose  Murat,  although  he  had 
retired  from  the  French  alliance  some  months 
before  the  final  catastrophe,  under  a  solemn  as- 
surance from  Austria  that  his  throne  should  not 
be  disturbed.  In  all  probability,  when  the  Con- 
gress had  got  through  with  the  vexed  questions 
of  Saxony  and  Poland,  their  disputes  about 
which  brought  them  to  the  brink  of  another 
war,  they  would  take  up  the  question  of  Napo- 
leon's residence,  and  it  is  hardly  possible  to  sup- 
pose that  he  would  have  been  permitted  to  retain 
Elba.  At  any  rate,  he  solved  this  question  for 
himself,  and  on  the  1st  of  March,  1815,  he  landed 
in  the  Gulf  of  Juan  near  Cannes.  He  had  with 
him  Drouot,  Bertrand,  Cambronne,  and  some 
1,100  men  of  the  Guard,  with  four  guns. 


234  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

There  is  no  need  that  I  should  tell  here  the 
story  of  that  wonderful  march  :  how  the  peasants 
brought  provisions  and  transportation  for  the 
little  army ;  how  the  villages  welcomed  the  exile 
and  the  cities  opened  their  gates  to  him  ;  how 
generals  and  marshals,  feeling  themselves  bound 
by  theii'  lately  given  oaths  to  support  the  House 
of  Bourbon,  vainly  endeavored  to  force  the  com- 
mon soldiers  to  fight  with  their  old  commander ; 
how  the  Emperor,  with  his  customary  sagacity 
and  with  more  than  his  wonted  intrepidity, 
trusted  himself  to  regiment  after  regiment,  and 
how  he  was  rewarded  for  his  confidence  by  their 
unqualified  devotion.  Nothing  like  it  has  ever 
been  seen  in  history.  Nothing  can  describe  it 
so  well  as  the  words  of  his  own  proclamation, 
written  on  board  the  brig  which  brought  him 
from  Elba.  "  Victory,"  said  he,  "  victory  will 
advance  at  the  full  gallop ;  the  eagle  with  the 
national  colors  will  fly  from  steeple  to  steeple 
even  to  the  towers  of  Notre  Dame." 

On  the  7th  of  March  Napoleon  reached  Gre- 
noble ;  on  the  10th  he  was  at  Lyons ;  on  the 
20th  he  entered  Paris.  Of  the  marshals,  Mas- 
sena  had  remained  at  his  post  at  Marseilles ; 
Macdonald  had  vainly  endeavored  to  get  his 
troops  to  obey  his  orders  and  check  the  march 
of  the  Emperor ;  Ney,  who  had  foolishly  under- 
taken the  task  of  fighting  his  former  chief,  had 
succumbed  partly  to  the  force  of  circumstances 
and  partly  to  a  natural  revulsion  of  feeling,  and 


THE  RETURN  FROM  ELBA.  235 

had  joined  liim ;  Soiilt,  who  was  then  minister 
of  war,  had  kept  his  faith  with  the  king,  but 
he  was  no  doubt  glad  to  see  Napoleon  back 
again.  Berthier  most  unaccountably  followed 
Maedonald  into  Belgium,  where  the  king  had  re- 
tired. Davout  and  Mortier,  like  Soult,  remained 
in  France  and  served  the  Emperor,  as,  after  his 
bloodless  and  successfid  march,  they  were  fully 
justified  in  doing. 

Never  was  a  revolution  more  complete  and 
more  unopposed.  There  was,  to  be  sure,  some 
appearance  of  trouble  in  the  south  of  France, 
where  the  royalists  had  many  partisans,  and  spe- 
cially in  Marseilles,  the  inhabitants  of  which  were 
bitter  against  Napoleon  for  the  loss  of  their  com- 
merce during  the  past  twenty  years.  But  these 
outbreaks  were  not  serious ;  they  do  not  deserve 
to  be  considered  as  qualifying  the  statement 
which  may  be  safely  made  that  France  welcomed 
Napoleon  back  as  the  man  of  her  choice. 

Wherever  Napoleon  had  spoken  on  his  jour- 
ney he  had  announced  that  his  policy  would  be 
one  of  peace  and  reform.  On  his  establishment 
at  the  Tuileries  he  sent  messages  of  amity  and 
of  sincere  acceptance  of  existing  treaties  to  all 
the  courts  of  Europe.  But  his  couriers  were 
turned  back  on  the  frontier.  The  allied  powers 
then  represented  at  the  Congress  of  Vienna  pro- 
claimed that  Napoleon,  by  his  escape  from  Elba, 
had  placed  himself  beyond  the  protection  of  the 
law   of  nations.     They   entered   into    a   solemn 


236  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

league  against  him,  pledging  themselves  to  use 
their  utmost  exertions  until  they  should  compass 
his  downfall. 

Everything  that  I  have  said  before  in  refer- 
ence to  the  folly  and  injustice  of  the  conduct  of 
the  allies  in  1814,  in  refusing  to  treat  with  Na- 
poleon, applies  with  even  greater  force  to  this 
celebrated  declaration.  Now,  at  any  rate,  there 
was  no  room  for  mistake  as  to  the  public  feeling 
of  France.  Now,  it  was  too  plain  for  contro- 
versy that  the  powers  were  banding  themselves 
together  to  force  upon  France  a  government 
which  she  had  positively  rejected.  Nothing  can 
be  alleged  in  excuse  of  the  course  which  the 
allied  sovereigns  took  at  this  juncture  but  that 
they  distrusted  Napoleon's  professions  and  were 
afraid  of  his  commencing  a  course  of  aggres- 
sion. To  these  suggestions  it  might  well  have 
been  replied,  in  the  first  place,  that  the  exten- 
sion of  the  French  Empire  had  been  mainly  the 
result  of  the  defeat  of  the  coalitions  formed 
against  Napoleon,  and  not  of  his  ambitious  un- 
dertakings ;  in  the  second  place,  that  Europe, 
reconstituted  as  it  now  was,  was  certainly  able  to 
resist  any  encroachment  of  France,  should  it  be 
made ;  and  thirdly,  that  the  France  of  to-day 
was  in  a  very  different  frame  of  mind  from  the 
France  of  1805  or  1806,  that  Napoleon  was 
likely  to  have  his  hands  full  at  home  in  reconcil- 
ing her  to  her  altered  position  among  the  na* 
tions,  and  in  adjusting  his  own  modes  of  gov« 


THE  RETURN  FROM  ELBA.  237 

eminent  to  the  demands  of  a  people  rendered 
exacting  by  the  adversity  which  had  befallen 
them  through  his  recklessness  and  folly.  But 
considerations  of  this  kind  do  not  appear  to  have 
been  urged.  The  cry  was  for  war,  war  to  the 
knife. 

On  his  part,  Napoleon  prepared  for  the  im- 
pending struggle  with  all  his  usual  energy  and 
acti\dty.  At  the  same  time  he  undertook  to 
meet  the  demands  of  the  leaders  of  the  Hberal 
party,  who  had  long  viewed  with  regret  the 
military  despotism  which  had  prevailed  during 
the  Empire,  and  who  requu-ed  at  Napoleon's 
hands  the  institution  of  representative  assem- 
bhes.  These  demands,  reasonable  in  themselves, 
it  was  no  doubt  wise  to  grant ;  at  the  same  time, 
envu'oned  as  France  then  was  by  her  enemies, 
the  realization  of  them  should  have  been  post- 
poned. In  time  of  war,  the  best  government  is 
a  military  despotism ;  and  if  France  was  going 
to  maintain  her  rioht  to  choose  her  own  form 
of  government  in  face  of  the  hostility  of  united 
Europe,  it  could  only  be  done  by  defemng  all 
questions  of  domestic  politics  until  she  had  set- 
tled the  vital  question  whether  she  was  or  was 
not  to  be  allowed  to  dispose  of  her  own  affairs 
in  her  own  way.  Napoleon,  however,  proclaimed 
a  new  constitution,  and  convened  under  it  a 
House  of  Peers  and  a  Chamber  of  Deputies. 

There  can  be  no  question  that  France  in  1815 
was  prepared  for  the  worst.     The  people  were 


238  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

determined  that  the  Bourbons  should  not  be 
forced  upon  them  again.  Patriotic  addresses 
and  offers  of  assistance  were  showered  ujion 
the  Emperor.  Public  enthusiasm  rose  to  a  great 
height.  It  was  plain  that  the  masses  of  the 
people  had  made  up  their  minds  to  stand  by 
the  tricolored  flag  no  matter  what  might  be  the 
fortune  of  war.  The  only  quarter  where  there 
was  any  doubt  respecting  the  existence  of  this 
determination  to  resist  the  threatened  invasion 
to  the  last  was  among  the  leaders  of  the  consti- 
tutional party,  so  called.  It  is  true  that  these 
gentlemen  had  but  a  small  following  among  the 
masses  of  the  people,  who  were  by  no  means 
sufficiently  educated  in  political  matters  to  care 
much  about  parliaments  and  cabinets ;  yet  the 
very  fact  of  their  being  more  interested  in  polit- 
ical matters  than  other  people  were  made  them 
prominent  in  the  new  Parliament  which  Napo- 
leon had  just  established.  These  gentlemen, 
among  whom  was  our  own  Lafayette,  had  prac- 
tically made  their  adhesion  to  their  country's 
cause  dependent  on  Napoleon's  granting  such 
parliamentary  institutions  as  they  thought  France 
ought  to  have.  It  was  no  secret  that,  in  their 
eyes,  these  institutions  were  the  principal  things 
to  be  considered,  to  which  the  right  of  their 
country  to  dispose  of  herself  and  her  affairs  as 
she  saw  fit,  without  dictation  from  foreign  pow- 
ers, was  to  be  postponed.  They  had  accordingly 
viewed  the  restoration  of  the  Bourbons  in  the 


THE  RETURN  FROM  ELBA.  239 

preceding"  year  without  alarm  or  hostility,  and  it 
was  certainly  to  be  feared  that  they  could  not  be 
relied  upon  now  to  defend  the  nation  to  the  last 
ag-ainst  the  new  invasion.  It  was  a  mistake,  as 
it  turned  out,  on  Napoleon's  part,  not  to  have 
dissolved  the  Chambers  before  he  took  the  field. 
But  that  French  politicians,  whether  legitimists 
or  constitutionalists,  imperialists  or  republicans, 
should  prefer  the  triumph  of  their  own  theories 
to  the  independence  of  their  country  has  been  a 
spectacle  of  such  frequent  occurrence  that  it  can 
no  longer  excite  surprise. 

The  nation,  as  I  have  said,  had  fully  made  up 
its  mind  to  the  worst ;  that  is,  to  another  invasion 
of  the  soil  of  France.  For  this  invasion,  people 
meant  this  time  to  be  prepared.  The  efforts  of 
Napoleon  to  fortify  Paris,  Lyons,  and  other  im- 
portant points  were  zealously  carried  out.  There 
was  no  lack  anywhere  of  energy,  activity,  patri- 
otism. The  thing  for  Napoleon  to  do  was  to 
conserve  all  this  moral  force  for  the  terrible 
struggle  which  was  now  ine^^table ;  to  augment 
his  armies,  to  strengthen  his  fortifications,  to 
complete  his  armaments  of  all  kinds,  to  get  all 
the  delay  he  could,  to  await  the  enemy  within 
the  territory  of  France,  and  then  deal  him  the 
tremendous  blows  which  no  one  but  he  could 
deal.  This  course  would  have  given  him  ample 
time  to  bring  out  the  still  enormous  military  re- 
sources which  France  possessed.  The  opening 
of  the  campaign  would  have  been  deferred  until 


240  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

every  fortified  town  was  in  condition  to  resist  a 
prolonged  siege.  More  than  this,  this  course,  if 
undertaken  with  a  dehberate  and  irrevocable  de- 
termination never  to  yield,  no  matter  what  might 
be  the  odds  against  him,  would  have  secured 
the  practically  unanimous  and  hearty  support  of 
the  nation,  while  a  prorogation  of  the  legisla- 
ture during  the  period  of  invasion  would  have 
prevented  the  cause  of  the  country  being  given 
away  by  any  weak-kneed  political  theorists  in 
Parliament. 

Unhappily,  such  a  serious  grasp  of  the  situa- 
tion seems  to  have  been  beyond  Napoleon's  ca- 
pacity. He  reUed  in  1815,  as  hitherto,  mainly 
upon  his  own  skill  and  good  fortune,  and  neg- 
lected entirely  the  establishment  of  that  identi- 
fication of  his  cause  with  that  of  France  which 
alone  could  give  the  struggle  a  reasonable 
chance  of  success.  France,  at  this  crisis  of  her 
fate,  needed  a  Frederic  rather  than  a  Napoleon. 
With  a  man  of  the  iron  temper  of  the  king  who 
carried  his  country  through  the  Seven  Years 
War,  France  would  have  maintained  her  inde- 
pendence. But  Napoleon  gave  to  the  struggle 
the  character  of  a  military  and  political  experi- 
ment, and  the  first  defeat  settled  the  whole  mat- 
ter. It  was  another  example  of  the  same  ven- 
turesome reliance  on  his  military  combinations 
which  we  have  observed  so  often  in  his  history, 
and  which  we  saw  fully  exemphfied  as  far  back 
as  the  campaign  of  Marengo, 


THE  RETURN  FROM  ELBA.  241 

The  fall  of  the  French  Empire  had  brought 
all  western  Germany  and  the  greater  part  of 
Italy  under  the  control  of  Austria  and  Prussia. 
Had  any  free  expression  been  allowed  to  the 
communities  which  had  formed  the  Confedera- 
tion of  the  Rhine  and  the  Kingdom  of  Italy, 
they  would  unquestionably  either  have  declared 
for  France  or  would  have  remained  neutral. 
Already  had  the  harsh  military  rule  of  Prussia 
begun  to  chafe  the  populations  of  the  late  King- 
dom of  Westphalia.  Already  had  Bavaria  and 
Wurtemberg"  beoun  to  dread  the  encroachments 
of  the  House  of  Hapsburg.  Even  now  the  com- 
paratively free  populations  of  Lombardy  and 
Venice  were  suffering  from  the  despotic  rule  of 
the  Austrians.  But  there  was  nothing  to  be 
done  save  to  submit,  and  all  the  resources  of 
these  states  were  placed  at  the  disposal  of  the 
three  gfreat  monarchies. 

Austria  was  far  from  being  in  a  condition  to 
begin  the  war  immediately.  The  soldiers  of  the 
Czar  had  arrived  home  again,  and  would  not  be 
available  for  service  on  the  Rhine  for  many 
weeks.  Prussia,  however,  was  ready  with  a  con- 
siderable force,  and  it  was  arranged  that  her 
army,  with  another  to  be  furnished  by  England, 
Holland,  Belgium,  and  some  of  the  smaller  Ger- 
man states,  should  occupy  Belgium,  defend  Hol- 
land in  case  of  invasion,  and,  when  the  other 
armies  should  be  ready  to  move,  invade  France 
from  the  side  of  the  north. 

16 


242  THE   FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

\Tlie  forces  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington  and 
Marshal  Bliicher  numbered  together  about 
223,000  men,  of  whom  the  Duke  could  bring 
into  the  field  about  95,000  men  and  the  mar- 
shal about  110,000  men.  They  were  stationed 
in  various  towns  and  villages,  extending  nearly 
from  Lieo'e  on  the  east  to  Ostend  on  the  west. 
Speaking  generally,  the  Prussians  were  on  the 
east  and  the  English  on  the  west  of  the  great  road 
which  runs  due  north  from  Charleroi  to  Brussels. 
The  Prussian  base  of  operations  and  depots  of 
supplies  were  on  the  Rhine,  in  the  direction  of 
Namur  and  Liege ;  those  of  the  English  were 
on  the  sea,  at  Ostend  and  neighboring  ports.  It 
was  plain  to  Napoleon  that  if,  by  a  battle  fought 
near  this  great  road  from  Charleroi  to  Brussels, 
he  could  badly  defeat  either  of  these  armies  the 
connection  between  them  would  in  all  probability 
be  severed,  as  the  beaten  army,  if  it  retired,  as 
it  probably  would,  on  its  own  base,  would  be 
obliged  to  separate  itself  definitely  from  the  other 
army,  whose  base  lay  in  precisely  the  ojDposite 
direction.  He  would  then  be  able  to  deal  with 
either  army  separately  ;  and,  as  he  expected  to  be 
able  to  bring  into  the  field  an  army  decidedly  su- 
perior to  either  force  taken  alone,  this  plan  looked 
very  promising.  Moreover,  England  and  Prussia 
were  the  two  most  active  powers  in  the  coalition, 
and  any  serious  misfortune  befalling  them  in  the 
outset  of  the  war  could  not  but  tend  very  much 
to  discourage  all  the  allied  powers,  and  rendei 


THE  RETURN  FROM  ELBA.  243 

them,  or  some  of  them,  wilHng  to  listen  to  rea- 
sonable terms  of  accommodation.  I  have  al- 
ready expressed  my  own  belief  that  under  the 
circumstances  it  would  have  been  wiser  for  Na- 
poleon to  have  awaited  the  invasion  of  France 
by  the  allies :  nevertheless,  there  is  a  great  deal 
to  be  said  in  favor  of  the  policy  of  taking  the 
offensive  which  he  adopted.  It  was  a  policy 
certainly  more  in  accordance  with  his  character 
and  pecuhar  genius. 

Accordingly  he  began  in  the  latter  part  of 
May  gradually  concentrating  his  corps  d'armee 
in  the  neighborhood  of  the  Belgian  frontier. 
Before  the  middle  of  June  this  movement  was 
accomplished.  From  various  causes,  which  we 
have  not  time  to  recapitulate,  he  was  unable  to 
muster  more  than  125,000  to  130,000  men  for 
this  campaign.  These  were  organized  as  fol- 
lows :  the  first  corps  under  General  Drouet 
d'Erlon ;  the  second  under  General  Reille ;  the 
third  under  General  Vandamme ;  the  fourth  un- 
der General  Gerard ;  the  sixth  under  General 
the  Count  de  Lobau  ;  and  the  Imperial  Guard. 
Of  these  officers  it  is  to  be  noticed  that  not  one 
had  attained  the  rank  of  marshal.  They  were 
all  gallant  and  meritorious  officers,  undoubtedly, 
but  no  one  among  them  had  made  any  special 
mark  in  his  long  years  of  service.  Perhaps  the 
Count  de  Lobau  was  the  most  distinguished  ;  he 
had  won  his  title  in  the  trying  days  of  Aspern 
and  Essling,  six  years  before.     Gerard  and  Van- 


244  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

damme  had  deserved  reputations  as  hard  fight- 
ers ;  d'Erlon  and  Reille  had  served  a  great  deal 
in  Spain^  and  were,  perhaps,  not  so  well  known 
as  the  others  to  the  public. 

To  Marshal  Ney  the  Emperor  assigned  com- 
mand of  the  left  wing  of  the  army,  consisting 
of  the  first  and  second  corps.  But  by  some  in- 
explicable oversight,  Ney  had  received  no  orders 
until  he  received  that  to  join  the  army.  The 
consequence  was  that  he  knew  nothing  about 
the  troops  he  was  to  command,  and  that,  sum- 
moned as  he  was  at  the  last  minute,  he  was 
scarcely  able  to  find  a  horse  to  ride,  and  came 
on  from  Paris  with  only  a  single  aide-de-camp. 
This  carelessness  of  Napoleon's  on  the  eve  of  a 
tremendous  and  exceedingly  doubtful  struggle 
it  is  indeed  hard  to  understand. 

To  Marshal  Grouchy,  a  new  appointment,  the 
Emperor  assigned  command  of  the  right  wing, 
consisting  of  the  third  and  fourth  corps,  re- 
serving the  sixth  corps  and  the  Guard  for  his 
own  immediate  control.  Grouchy  was  a  man  of 
known  gallantry  and  a  faithful  officer,  but  he 
had  never  made  that  sort  of  a  reputation  which 
Napoleon  in  his  younger  days  used  to  require 
before  he  bestowed  upon  a  general  the  baton 
of  marshal.  To  entrust  a  division  commander 
with  the  command  of  two  corps  was  taking  a 
very  great  risk.  Nor  was  there  any  necessity 
for  it  at  all.  The  services  of  Marshal  Davout 
could    have    been    had,    than    whom    Napoleon 


THE   RETURN  FROM  ELBA.  245 

never  had  au  abler  or  more  devoted  lieutenant. 
This  marshal,  whom  Napoleon  had  made  Minis- 
ter of  War,  and  had  charged  with  the  defence 
of  Paris,  begged  the  Emperor  to  allow  him  to 
take  the  field  under  him ;  he  represented  that 
the  defence  of  Paris,  notwithstanding  its  incon- 
testable importance,  was,  like  all  questions  of 
interior  defence,  a  secondary  matter,  and  essen- 
tially subordinate  to  the  result  of  military  opera- 
tions ;  that  when  one  was  about  to  play  a  deci- 
sive game  on  the  field  of  battle,  it  was  no  time 
to  make  trial  of  new  men ;  that  it  was  neces- 
sary, on  the  contrary,  to  surround  one's  self  with 
those  who  had  made  proof  of  their  capacity,  and 
had  had  experience  of  high  command.  But  to 
all  these  representations  the  Emperor  turned  a 
deaf  ear.  "  I  cannot,"  said  the  Emperor,  "  en- 
trust Paris  to  any  one  else."  "  Sire,"  said  the 
marshal,  "  if  you  are  victorious,  Paris  will  be 
yours  ;  if  you  are  beaten,  neither  I  nor  any  one 
else  can  help  you."  There  was  really  no  answer 
to  this  suggestion.  The  Emperor  undoubtedly 
was  thinking  of  the  unnecessary  surrender  of 
Paris  the  year  before ;  but  the  circumstances 
now  were  wholly  different.  There  was  no  en- 
emy now  threatening  Paris,  as  there  was  then. 
It  is  impossible  to  imagine  any  sufficient  justifi- 
cation for  this  refusal  of  Napoleon's  to  permit 
Davout  to  serve  with  the  active  army.  It  was 
an  error  of  judgment  that  probably  cost  Napo- 
leon his  throne. 


246  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

Deprived  of  Berthier,  his  old  chief  of  staff, 
as  we  have  seen,  Napoleon  selected  Marshal 
Soult,  another  singular  choice.  Soult  had  for 
years  commanded  an  army  himself,  and  had  had 
a  chief  of  staff  of  his  own.  Such  a  man  is  not 
likely  all  at  once  to  fall  into  the  careful  and 
methodical  habits  of  a  Berthier.  There  were 
many  younger  officers  of  known  capacity,  any 
of  whom  would  have  made  quite  as  good  a 
chief  of  staff  as  Marshal  Soult,  and  Soult  might 
well  have  taken  command  of  one  of  the  corps, 
or  of  the  Guard,  which  in  the  absence  of  Mar- 
shal Mortier,  who  had  fallen  ill,  was  without  a 
chief. 

The  Emperor  was  about  to  undertake  an  offen- 
sive campaign  with  125,000  men  against  two  ar- 
mies outnumbering  his  by  about  100,000  men. 
It  goes  Avithout  saying  that  he  should  have  made 
use  of  all  his  resources.  Had  Davout  instead 
of  Grouchy  commanded  the  right  wing,  had 
Ney  been  properly  forewarned,  had  Soult  com- 
manded the  Guard  or  a  corps,  and  Grouchy  the 
cavalry,  the  risk  would  have  been  great  enough  ; 
but  it  would  have  been  much  less  than  the  risk 
actually  encountered.  In  this  emergency  it  was 
possible  for  Napoleon  to  avail  himself  of  the  ser- 
vices of  the  man  who  had  won  the  battle  of 
Auerstadt ;  it  is  absolutely  inconceivable  why  he 
should  have  preferred  to  run  the  hazard  of  sup- 
plying his  place  by  a  general  who  had  never  in 
his  life  held  a  separate  command. 


THE  RETURN  FROM  ELBA.  247 


The  Duke  of  Wellington,  after  making  all  de- 
ductions for  garrisons  and  so  forth,  brought  into 
the  field  somewhat  over  90,000  men.  Of  these 
only  about  35,000  were  English  troops,  however. 
Of  the  remaining  55,000,  the  Duke  considered 
not  over  15,000  as  perfectly  trustworthy.  The 
other  troops,  being  raised  in  Holland,  Belgium, 
and  Nassau,  so  long  under  French  control,  were 
distrusted  by  him,  as  much  because  of  their 
supposed  preference  for  his  antagonist's  cause 
as  for  theii*  admitted  inferiority  to  his  English 
troops.  He  had  under  him  Sir-  Thomas  Picton 
and  Lord  Hill,  two  of  his  best  Peninsular  officers. 
The  Prince  of  Orange  and  the  Duke  of  Bruns- 
wick also  held  high  commands  in  his  motley 
army.  The  cavalry  were  under  Lord  Uxbridge, 
afterwards  the  Marquis  of  Anglesey. 

The  Prussian  army  consisted  of  four  strong 
corps  averaging  nearly  30,000  men  each.  Biilow 
was  the  only  corps  commander  who  had  won  any 
European  reputation. 

On  the  12th  of  June  the  Emperor  left  Paris. 
On  the  14th  he  was  with  the  army,  and  issued  to 
it  one  of  those  stirring  proclamations  with  which 
he  had  always  aroused  the  spii'its  of  his  soldiers 
when  on  the  eve  of  a  decisive  struggle.  He  re- 
minded them  that  it  was  the  anniversary  of  Ma- 
rengo and  of  Friedland ;  he  called  to  theii-  minds 
the  injustice  of  the  coaHtion  against  France ;  he 
urged  them  to  conquer  or  to  die. 

At  noon  of  the  15th  the  army,  or  a  large  part 


248  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

of  it,  was  across  the  Sambre.  Its  watchfires  the 
night  before  had  given  notice  of  its  concentra- 
tion and  near  approach.  The  Prussians  on  the 
border  were  warned,  and  opposed  a  resolute 
countenance  to  the  advancing  columns.  There 
was  a  certain  amount  of  delay  here  and  there  in 
the  movements  of  the  troojjs,  such  as  always 
happens  when  an  army  takes  the  field  after  a 
long  period  of  inaction  ;  but,  generally  spealdng, 
things  went  well  with  the  French.  Napoleon's 
plan  of  campaign  was,  as  I  have  said,  to  sepa- 
rate the  English  and  Prussian  armies  from  each 
other.  With  his  left  wing  under  Ney  he  under- 
took to  hold  the  straioht  road  from  Charleroi  to 
Brussels ;  with  his  right  wing  and  centre  he  in- 
tended to  fight  the  Prussians,  who  he  expected 
would  be  able  to  concentrate  sooner  than  the 
English,  and  who  he  knew  would  be  obliged  to 
fight,  if  they  intended  to  fight  at  all,  on  the  east 
of  that  road.  At  night  of  the  15th,  accordingly, 
Ney  was  at  Frasnes  with  one  division  of  the 
second  corps  and  some  cavalry,  opposite  one  of 
Wellington's  Dutch  brigades,^  which  was  hold- 
ing Quatre  Bras ;  while  the  greater  portion  of 
the  third  corps  was  near  Fleurus,  confronting 
the  Prussian  corps  of  Ziethen.  The  bulk  of  the 
French  army  was  within  supporting  distance  of 
the  heads  of  the  two  columns  constituting  the 

^  The  commander  of  this  brigade,  Prince  Bernard  of  Saxe 
Weimar,  deserves  great  credit  for  having,  without  orders,  got 
his  command  together  at  Quatre  Bras. 


THE  RETURN  FROM  ELBA.  249 

wiiigs,  although  a  considerable  part  had  not  yet 
crossed  the  river.  The  progress  made  had  not 
been  what  the  Emperor  had  expected  it  would 
be,  what  it  would  have  been  had  he  had  as  his 
corps  commanders  the  brilliant  men  who,  brought 
to  the  top  in  the  turmoil  of  the  Revolution,  had, 
ten  years  before,  captured  Ulm  and  won  Auster- 
litz  ;  still  it  had  been  on  the  whole  a  satisfactory 
day.  There  was  nothing  to  prevent  the  whole 
army  being  in  position  at  Quatre  Bras  and  at 
Fleurus  by  noon  of  the  16th. 

Napoleon  has  said  in  his  Memoirs  that  he  or- 
dered Ney  on  the  afternoon  of  the  15th  to  occupy 
Quatre  Bras  that  night.  That  he  did  give  Ney 
such  orders  appears  certain  from  the  statement 
in  the  Official  Bulletin,  sent  off  to  Paris  that 
evening,  that  Ney  was  at  that  moment  at  Quatre 
Bras.  But  the  place  ought  to  have  been,  and 
might  have  been,  carried  before  noon  or  early 
in  the  afternoon  of  the  next  day,  which  would 
have  answered  every  purpose. 

While  Napoleon  was  thus  massing  his  forces, 
what  were  the  allies  doing? 

The  Prussian  corps  of  Ziethen,  as  we  have  seen, 
had  resolutely  opposed  the  French  advance  dur- 
ing the  day  of  the  15th,  and  of  course  Marshal 
Blilcher  had  had  ample  warning  of  the  impend- 
ing storm.  He  had  ordered  up  the  other  three 
corps,  though,  owing  to  a  blunder,  only  two  of 
them  began  their  march  that  day.  That  even- 
ing, while  Ziethen  was  near  Ligny,  Pirch  was  at 


250  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

Mazy,  and  Thielmann  at  Namur.  Billow  was 
still  at  Liege.  Notwithstanding  the  absence  of 
Billow,  which  left  him  only  90,000  men,  the 
brave  old  marshal  meant  to  fight  Napoleon, 
though  he  supposed  he  carried  with  him  130,- 
000  Frenchmen.  He  rehed  to  a  certain  extent, 
though  not  probably  very  definitely,  upon  help 
from  Wellington.  But,  as  it  turned  out,  the 
movement  of  Ney  on  the  Brussels  turnpike  pre- 
vented Wellington  from  affording  his  ally  any 
assistance. 

The  Duke  of  Wellinofton  was  informed  of  the 
decision  of  Marshal  Bliicher  to  concentrate  his 
army  near  Ligny  some  hours  before  he  was  able, 
from  the  reports  which  reached  him,  to  determine 
with  certainty  the  movements  of  the  French. 
By  some  mischance,  no  news  whatever  of  the 
advance  of  the  enemy  reached  Brussels  till  three 
P.  M.  —  some  twelve  hours  after  the  crossing;-  of 
the  Sambre :  and  then  the  information  was  very 
indefinite.  As  late  as  ten  p.  m.,  all  that  the 
Duke  knew  was  that  the  French  "  apjDcared  to 
menace  Charleroi."  It  was  not  until  between 
ten  and  eleven  o'clock  that  it  was  ascertained 
that  the  main  body  of  the  French  was  opposed 
to  the  Prussians  in  the  neighborhood  of  Ligny ; 
and  until  this  was  ascertained,  the  Duke  had  to 
take  into  account  the  possibility  that  Napoleon 
might  be  carrying  the  bulk  of  his  army  to  the 
westward  of  Charleroi,  by  way  of  Mons,  for 
instance,  with  the  object  of   breaking  the  com- 


PART  OF  BELGIUM. 


Scale  of  Miles. 


ONIVF^^y  OF  ESIIFO. 

.Ki}>^xInVEnt  of 


CAMPAIGN    OF  WATERLOO. 

Situation  of  tfie  opposing  Armies  at  9  A.  M.,  June  16tfi,  1815. 
French,  ■  English.  ■ 

I  Napoleon's  Headquaitors,  "^  English  Headiiuarters,  "♦• 

jfey's  "  B  Prussians,  ^ 

Prussian  Headquarters,  ^ 


THE  RETURN  FROM  ELBA.  251 

miinlcations  of  the  English  with  Osteiid  and 
Brussels.  Hence  the  Duke's  first  orders  di- 
rected the  assembling  of  his  divisions  at  various 
points  on  the  west  of  the  Brussels  turnpike,  so 
that  a  concentration  of  his  army  to  meet  a  French 
advance  by  way  of  Mons,  or  to  the  westward 
of  it,  might  easily  be  effected ;  and  it  was  not 
until  he  was  certain  that  the  main  body  of  the 
French  under  Napoleon  was  in  face  of  the  Prus- 
sians at  Ligny  that  the  Duke  felt  warranted  in 
issuing  orders  for  his  whole  army  to  march  to 
Quatre  Bras.  Then  there  seems  to  have  been 
some  delay,  either  on  the  Duke's  part  or  on  that 
of  his  staff,  as  these  orders  were  not  issued  till 
the  early  morning  of  the  16th,  when  there  was 
not  time  enough  for  them  to  be  effectually  car- 
ried out. 

But  fortune  on  this  occasion,  as  often  before, 
favored  the  Duke  of  Wellington.  Not  only  did 
Prince  Bernard's  brigade  remain  at  Quatre  Bras, 
but  Perponcher,  who  commanded  the  division, 
brought  over  to  its  sujDport  from  Nivelles  the 
other  brigade,  Bylandt's.  Then,  during  the 
forenoon  of  the  16th,  Wellington  rode  down  to 
Quatre  Bras  in  person,  and  then  rode  over  to 
Ligny,  where  he  had  a  conference  with  Marshal 
Bliicher. 

The  French  army,  in  its  protracted  and  labori- 
ous march  of  the  day  before,  had  become  so  much 
scattered  that  it  took  most  of  the  forenoon  to 
get  it  well  in  hand.     The  concentration  of  the 


252  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

right  wing  and  centre,  which  took  place  under 
Napoleon's  own  eye,  was  at  last  satisfactorily 
effected,  and  the  third  and  fourth  corps  and 
the  Guard  were  in  position  near  Fleurus  by  noon, 
if  not  before ;  the  sixth  corps  came  up  in  the 
course  of  the  afternoon.  As  regfards  the  left 
wing  of  the  army,  d'Erlon  had  in  the  early  morn- 
ing finished  crossing  the  Sambre,  and  had  taken 
post  in  rear  of  Gosselies,  where  were  two  divi- 
sions of  the  second  corps  under  Reille.  Another 
division  of  the  second  corps  was  further  to  the 
front,  at  Frasnes.  The  fourth  division  under 
Girard  was  with  the  right  wing  of  the  army. 
About  nine  o'clock  the  Emperor  issued  orders 
for  Ney  to  advance  with  his  entire  command  and 
occupy  Quatre  Bras. 

While  these  movements  were  being  made,  the 
Emperor  was  studying  the  situation.  It  seemed 
at  first  as  if  neither  of  the  allied  armies  had  been 
able  to  concentrate  in  sufiicient  force  to  oppose 
him.  The  corps  of  Ziethen  was  the  only  Prus- 
sian corps  which  he  had  yet  encountered.  The 
force  which  had  been  observed  by  his  advanced 
posts  at  Frasnes  did  not  seem  like  a  large  one. 
Could  he  then  safely  assume  that  he  was  to  be 
allowed  to  march  on  Brussels  without  serious 
molestation,  and  that  Wellington  and  Bliicher 
had  retired  for  the  time  being  upon  their  re- 
spective bases? 

Before  the  French  army  had  got  itself  to- 
gether,  however^  it  became  evident  to  the  ex* 


THE  RETURN  FROM  ELBA.  253 

perienced  eye  of  Napoleon  that  the  corps  of 
Ziethen  was  recemiiof  larsfe  reinforcements  from 
the  eastward,  and  that  the  Prussians  had  no 
idea  of  leaving  their  positions  at  Saint  Amand 
and  Ligny.  An  attack  on  them  before  they 
should  be  reinforced  by  the  English  became, 
therefore,  imperative.  In  such  an  attack  he  had 
no  doubt  whatever  of  being  successful.  The 
Emperor  also  calculated  that  Ney,  with  the 
40,000  men  assigned  to  him,  would  be  stronger 
than  any  force  which  the  Duke  could  collect, 
scattered  as  he  knew  the  English  and  Dutch 
forces  to  have  been.  He  therefore  expected  suc- 
cess on  both  ends  of  the  line. 

Accordingly,  after  making  his  usual  personal 
reconnoissance  on  the  line  of  the  vedettes,  he 
attacked  the  Prussians  vigorously  between  two 
and  three  o'clock.  The  corps  of  Vandamme  and 
Gerard,  assisted  by  the  di\dsion  of  Girard  from 
the  second  corps,  threw  themselves  impetuously 
into  the  villages  of  Saint  Amand  and  Ligny, 
where  the  Prussians  had  taken  post.  Never  was 
a  battle  more  hotly  disputed.  The  Prussian  po- 
sition was  a  strong  one,  and  their  soldiers  made 
good  use  of  the  stone  houses  in  the  villages. 
Saint  Amand  was  captured  and  recaptured.  The 
contest  seemed  to  gra\atate,  so  to  speak,  to 
this  village,  which  was  on  the  Prussian  extreme 
right.  It  became  e^Hident  to  Napoleon  that  Mar- 
ghal  Bliicher,  carried  away  by  his  ardor,  was  ac- 
tually thinking  of  turning  the  French  left.     It 


254  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

was  plain  that  he  was  stripping  his  centre,  be- 
hind the  village  of  Ligny,  of  troops.  The  Em- 
peror ordered  the  Guard  to  prepare  for  action. 

Suddenly,  about  5.30  p.  m.,  word  is  brought 
to  him  of  the  appearance  of  a  strong  body  of 
troops  marching  from  the  direction  of  the  turn- 
pike towards  his  left.  The  projected  movement 
of  the  Guard  is  at  once  suspended,  until  it  can 
be  ascertained  what  these  troops  are.  Meantime 
a  dreadful  suspicion  runs  through  the  ranks  that 
Ney  has  met  with  a  disaster,  and  that  it  is  an 
English  corps  which  is  approaching.  But  this 
is  of  short  duration.  The  Prussian  cavalry  are 
seen  skirmishing  with  and  then  retiring  before 
the  strange  corps.  Every  one  then  assumes  that 
Ney  has  been  successful,  and  that  he  has  sent  this 
body  of  troops  to  assist  his  master.  Suddenly 
the  corps  is  seen  to  halt,  to  face  about,  and  then 
slowly  to  disappear  to  the  westward.  The  bat- 
tle is  resumed  as  before.  The  Emperor  takes  up 
again  his  favorite  manoeuvre  of  breaking  the 
centre  of  the  enemy's  line.  The  Imperial  Guard, 
preceded  by  its  formidable  artillery,  and  flanked 
by  its  equally  formidable  cavalry,  carries  every- 
thing before  it.  The  Prussian  positions  in  the 
rear  of  Ligny  are  occupied  in  spite  of  a  spirited 
resistance,  and  the  safety  of  the  troops  in  Saint 
Amand  is  gravely  compromised.  Over  twenty 
pieces  of  cannon  are  taken.  Had  the  attack 
been  made  earlier,  as  it  would  have  been  but  for 
the  unexpected  delay  mentioned  above,  several 


THE  RETURN  FROM  ELBA.  255 

thousand   prisoners   must   have   been  captured. 
Napoleon  had  won  his  last  victory. 

Let  us  now  return  to  the  left  wing,  under 
Marshal  Ney.  That  officer  received  somewhere 
between  ten  and  eleven  o'clock  orders  to  occupy 
Quatre  Bras.  Why  they  were  not  sent  before  is 
by  no  means  clear,  but  it  was  probably  because 
Napoleon  had  not  fully  made  up  his  mind  what 
course  to  take.  Ney  proceeded  at  once  to  ex- 
ecute his  instructions.  The  rest  of  the  second 
corps,  Reille's,  was  brought  up  to  Frasnes.  Or- 
ders were  immediately  sent  to  d'Erlon  to  fol- 
low Reille.  D'Erlon  got  his  orders,  he  says,  at 
half  past  eleven  ;  Reille  may  have  received  his  a 
little  before.  As  matter  of  fact  they  both  knew 
more  than  an  hour  before  what  their  orders  were 
to  be,  as  the  despatch  to  Ney  had  been  commu- 
nicated to  Reille  as  early  as  ten  o'clock  by  the 
Emperor's  own  aide-de-camp  on  his  way  to  Ney's 
headquarters,  and  Reille  had  at  once  sent  word 
to  d'Erlon.  There  was  no  reason  in  the  world 
why  these  officers  should  not  have  got  under 
way  at  half  past  ten,  for  they  ought,  of  course, 
to  have  been  ready  to  move  at  a  moment's  warn- 
ing. In  this  case  they  would  have  reached 
Frasnes  by  half  past  twelve.  As  it  was,  Reille, 
with  two  divisions  of  his  corps,  joined  the  third 
division  at  Frasnes  shortly  before  two.  As  for 
d'Erlon,  he  ordered  his  corps  to  Frasnes,  and 
then  preceded  it,  to  see  what  was  going  on  at  the 
front.     While  there,  an  aide-de-camp  of  the  Em- 


256  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

peror's  rode  up,  showed  him  a  despatch  which 
he  was  carrying  to  Marshal  Ney,  and  coolly  told 
d'Erlon  that  he  had  ventured,  in  compliance 
with  this  despatch,  to  order  his  corps  off  from 
the  road  to  Frasnes  towards  Saint  Amand. 
D'Erlon  could  of  course  do  nothing  else  than 
ride  off  to  rejoin  his  corps,  which  he  conducted 
until  it  appeared  as  we  have  seen,  heading  for 
the  French  left,  and  caused  the  sensation  in  the 
Emperor's  army  of  which  we  have  spoken  above. 

Meantime  Ney,  relying  on  the  reinforcement 
which,  as  he  supposed,  d'Erlon  would  speedily 
bring  him,  had  attacked  Perponcher's  Dutch 
Belgian  division  under  the  Prince  of  Orange 
with  great  vigor  and  with  good  success.  The 
French  troops  not  only  outnumbered  their  an- 
tagonists, but  they  were  much  more  experienced 
soldiers.  While  things  were  in  this  state,  Wel- 
lington returned  from  Ligny,  where  he  had  been 
to  confer  with  Marshal  Bliicher.  Fortunately 
for  him.  Sir  Thomas  Picton  now  arrived  with  his 
division  of  British  troops.  From  this  time  on, 
the  allied  forces  were  continually  strengthened 
by  reinforcements. 

At  last  Ney,  furious  at  the  non-arrival  of  the 
first  corps,  learned  what  had  taken  place,  and  at 
once  peremptorily  ordered  its  return  to  Frasnes. 
But  meantime  he  tried  hard  to  win  the  day  with 
the  troops  he  had  with  him.  No  one  could  have 
fought  20,000  men  better  than  Ney  did  at 
Quatre  Bras.     But,  as  the  hours  wore  on,  the 


L 


CAMPAIGN   OF  WATERLOO. 

Situation  of  tfie  opposing  Armies  at  5  P.  M.,  June  16th,  1815. 

Fronch,  ■  Knglish, 

Kapoleon's  HeaiUiuarters,  »  English  Headquarters, 

Key's  "  "  Prussians, 

D'Krlon's  Corps,  IB*  Prussian  Headquarters. 


THE  RETURN  FROM  ELBA.  257 

superiority  of  the  allies  in  numbers,  and  espe- 
cially in  fresh  troops,  became  painfully  manifest. 
D'Erlon  did  not  return,  could  not  return,  in  time 
to  take  part  in  the  action.  Finally  Marshal 
Ney,  after  a  contest  most  creditable  to  him,  re- 
tired to  his  original  position  at  Frasnes.  Wel- 
lington had  by  this  time  collected  in  front  of 
him  over  30,000  men. 

One  word  in  reg'ard  to  the  order  which  the 
staff  officer  showed  to  the  commander  of  d'Erlon's 
leading  division.  It  was,  in  all  probability,  the 
order  which,  dated  at  two  o'clock,  directed  Ney, 
after  having  beaten  the  troops  in  front  of  him, 
to  turn  back  in  the  direction  of  Napoleon,  and 
endeavor  to  surround  the  Prussians.  The  officer 
carrying  the  despatch,  having  to  ride  about  six 
miles  on  cross-roads,  as  far  as  Gosselies,  could 
hardly  have  reached  the  head  of  d'Erlon's  column 
on  the  Brussels  turnpike  before  half-past  four. 
It  would  have  taken  these  troops  a  good  hour  to 
march  eastward  to  the  point  where  their  approach 
was  perceived ;  and  they  were  first  seen,  as  has 
been  stated,  about  half-past  five. 

It  would  be  an  entire  mistake  to  suppose  that 
the  battle  of  Quatre  Bras  was  a  defeat  for  the 
French.  Tactically,  indeed,  it  may  be  so  consid- 
ered, as  the  French  undertook  to  carry  the  cross- 
roads, which  they  were  unable  to  do.  But  stra- 
tegically it  answered  its  purpose  sufficiently  well. 
That  purpose  was  to  prevent  the  union  of  the 
two  allied  armies,  while  Napoleon,  with  the  bulk 

17 


268  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

of  the  French  army,  was  fighting  one  of  them, 

—  the  Prussians.  The  effect  of  the  afternoon's 
fight  at  Quatre  Bras  was  that  Napoleon  had  the 
Prussians  all  to  himself. 

In  two  respects,  however,  the  results  of  this 
day  were  far  less  than  they  should  have  been. 
The  presumption  and  ignorance  of  that  staff 
officer  who,  carrying  a  despatch  to  a  general 
commanding  an  army,  —  for  that  was  the  position 
of  Ney  when  commanding  the  isolated  left  wing, 

—  took  upon  himself  to  show  it  to  a  division 
commander  e7i  route  for  the  headquarters  of  his 
corps,  before  showing  it  either  to  the  corps  com- 
mander or  to  the  marshal,  altered  the  whole 
course  of  the  campaign.     Had  this  not  happened, 

—  and  I  need  hardly  remind  *you  that  for  this 
wretched  blunder  no  one  but  the  staff  officer 
himself  is  even  remotely  to  blame,  —  Ney  would 
without  question  have  badly  defeated  the  forces 
under  the  Duke  of  Wellington  by  four  in  the 
afternoon.  With  40,000  men  he  could  have  in- 
flicted upon  them  a  crushing  defeat,  and,  judging 
from  the  vigorous  and  skilful  manner  in  which 
he  conducted  the  fight  with  20,000  men,  he 
would  have  done  so. 

The  consequences  of  this  might  have  been 
twofold. 

First :  Whether  even  the  Iron  Duke  would 
have  risked  a  battle  at  Waterloo  with  his  motley 
army,  half  of  whom  he  thoroughly  distrusted,  if 
he  as  well  as  BlUcher  had  been  beaten  in  his  first 


THE  RETURN  FROM  ELBA.  259 

encounter  with  Napoleon,  may  well  be  doubted. 
But  if  he  had  decided  not  to  fight  at  Waterloo, 
in  all  probabilit}'  the  opportunity  for  a  combined 
operation  against  Napoleon  would  have  passed 
away,  not  to  return. 

Second:  If  Ney  had  so  thoroughly  beaten 
the  Duke  as  to  have  been  able  to  have  detached 
one  corps  by  the  Namur  road  upon  the  rear  of 
the  Prussian  army,  the  result  would  have  been 
most  striking.  The  Prussians  in  that  event 
could  not  have  retreated  on  Wavre,  could  not 
have  fought  at  Waterloo.  Napoleon  would  have 
made  as  brilliant  a  camj^aign  as  he  ever  made  in 
his  life. 

I  do  not  think  I  am  overstating  the  probabil- 
ities of  the  case  at  all  w  hen  I  say  that,  had  it  not 
been  for  the  unpardonable  blunder  of  that  staff 
officer,  Ney  woidd  have  routed  Wellington  at 
Quatre  Bras  and  Napoleon  would  have  routed 
BlUcher  at  Ligny.  As  it  was,  there  were  times 
that  afternoon  when  Ney's  20,000  men  came 
within  an  ace  of  beating  the  motley  force  which 
the  Duke  had  managed  to  collect  at  Quatre  Bras. 
A  glance  at  any  map  of  Ligny  will  show  how 
impossible  it  would  have  been  for  the  right  wing 
of  the  Prussian  army  to  have  extricated  itself 
from  its  position  at  Saint  Amand  ^4th  a  force 
coming  up  behind  it  on  the  Namur  road. 

The  fact  is  that  Bliicher  and  Wellington  at 
the  outset  of  this  campaign  departed  from  their 
proper   role   as    commanders    of    allied    armies. 


260  THE  FinST  NAPOLEON. 

Blucher,  with  his  customary  obstinacy,  fought 
with  a  sublime  disregard  of  the  possibility  of  be- 
ing reinforced  by  his  ally.  Wellington,  unwill- 
ing to  order  his  army  to  Quatre  Bras  until  he 
knew  that  his  enemy  was  concentrating  at  Fleurus, 
was  obliged  to  fight  for  hours  against  great  odds, 
and  nothing  but  his  great  tactical  skill,  practiced 
eye,  cool  head,  and  indomitable  pluck  carried 
him  through.  As  Chesney  says,  the  Duke  "  at 
dark,  thirty  hours  after  his  first  warning,  had 
only  present  at  Quatre  Bras  three  eighths  of  his 
infantry,  one  third  of  his  guns,  and  one  seventh 
of  his  cavalry."  That  d'Erlon  did  not  come  up 
was  no  thanks  to  Wellinoton.  We  admire  the 
courage  of  the  Prussian  marshal  and  of  the  Eng- 
lish general,  but  there  can  be  no  reasonable 
doubt  that  their  arrangements  were  so  faulty 
that  they  both  would  have  been  beaten  save  for 
a  pure  accident.  And  if  they  had  both  been 
beaten  on  the  16th,  nothing  short  of  a  miracle 
could  ever  have  united  their  armies  again. 


LECTURE  VII. 

WATERLOO    AND    ST.    HELENA. 

It  has  always  been  a  thing  impossible  to  de- 
fend or  excuse,  that  the  Emperor  and  his  chief 
of  staff  did  not  take  proper  measures  to  ascer- 
tain the  du-ection  of  the  Prussian  retreat  after 
the  battle  of  Ligny.  The  Emperor,  however,  al- 
though in  a  generally  sound  and  robust  state  of 
health,  and  with  as  clear  a  head  as  he  ever  had 
in  his  life,  was  at  this  time  a  sufferer  from  some 
local  maladies  which  diminished  perceptibly  his 
usually  unceasing  activity.  Soult,  as  I  have  said 
before,  was  too  great  a  personage  for  the  position 
of  chief  of  staff ;  he  had  been  too  long  an  army 
commander  himself.  Many  a  younger  man  w^ho 
might  have  been  selected  would  have  had  all 
the  requisite  information  as  to  the  retreat  of  the 
Prussians  ready  for  Napoleon  in  the  morning. 
However  we  may  account  for  it,  the  only  recon- 
noissance  made  was  made  on  the  Namur  road. 
Yet  there  was  jjlenty  of  cavalry ;  and  had  recon- 
noissances  been  made  to  the  northw^ard  as  well 
as  to  the  eastward,  there  could  have  been  no 
room  for  doubt  as  to  where  the  Prussians  were 


262  THE   FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

going.  The  greater  part  of  the  Prussian  army 
bivouacked  only  a  short  distance  in  rear  of  where 
they  had  fought,  and  only  started  to  leave  at 
daybreak.  The  ignorance,  therefore,  which  pre- 
vailed at  Napoleon's  headquarters  as  to  the 
whereabouts  of  the  enemy  was  utterly  wdthout  ex- 
cuse. One  Prussian  corps  was  at  Gembloux  at 
two  in  the  afternoon  of  the  next  day.  Whether 
information  of  this  nature  is  or  is  not  that  which 
a  chief  of  staff  ought  to  procure  without  special 
orders,  I  shall  not  undertake  to  say. 

There  can  be  no  doubt,  too,  as  to  the  careless 
confidence  displayed  by  NajDoleon  on  the  morn- 
ing of  the  17th.  It  is  true  that  he  always  pre- 
ferred to  give  his  soldiers  a  rest  after  a  battle. 
He  never  called  upon  them,  when  he  could  help 
it,  for  continuous  labor  and  daily  exposure.  But 
in  the  emergency  in  which  he  then  was,  every- 
thing depended  on  knowing  where  the  Prussians 
had  gone,  whether  to  their  own  base  of  opera- 
tions, to  Liege  or  elsewhere  to  the  eastward,  or 
to  the  north,  so  as  to  unite  with  Wellington 
and  fight  another  battle.  Until  this  was  settled, 
Napoleon  had  no  right  to  take  a  moment's  re- 
pose. 

Napoleon,  however,  on  this  occasion  did  not 
display  the  indefatigable  activity  of  his  earlier 
years.  Pajol  having  picked  up  some  cannon  and 
prisoners  on  the  road  to  Namur,  it  was  hastily 
assumed,  apparently,  that  the  bulk  of  the  Prus- 
sian army  had  retreated  in  that  direction.     Id 


WATERLOO  AND  ST.   HELENA.  263 

this  belief,  tke  Emjjeror  was  unwilling  to  march 
against  the  Eughsh  with  his  whole  army ;  he  felt 
that  he  ought,  and  that  he  could  afford,  to  leave 
a  considerable  force  to  harass  and  follow  up  the 
Prussians,  as  well  as  to  protect  his  communica- 
tions in  his  march  on  Brussels,  in  the  event  of 
theu'  rallying. 

Hence,  near  noon,  he  ordered  Grouchy  to  take 
the  third  and  foiu'th  corps,  which  had  been 
previously  placed  under  his  command,  with  one 
cUvisiou  of  the  sixth  corps,  the  cavalry  of  Exel- 
mans,  and  part  of  that  of  Pajol,  the  whole 
amounting  to  upwards  of  33,000  men,  and  to 
jDursue  the  Prussians.  He  gave  him  at  first 
verbal  orders ;  but,  having  shortly  afterwards  re- 
ceived news  that  a  Prussian  corps  had  been  seen  at 
Gembloux,  apparently  €71  route  for  Wavi-e,  he  sent 
Grouchy  an  order  which  he  dictated  to  Bertrand, 
who  happened  to  be  ^vith  him.  This  order,  the  ex- 
istence of  which  for  many  years  Marshal  Grouchy 
denied,  instructs  Grouchy  to  move  to  Gembloux, 
and  to  explore  the  Namur  road.  But,  though 
Napoleon  undoubtedly  supposed  that  the  Prus- 
sians had  retreated  in  this  direction,  he  at  the 
same  time  recognized  the  possibility  of  their  hav- 
mg  fallen  back  to  the  north,  so  as  to  join  the 
English.  Of  this  he  warned  Grouchy  in  this 
pregnant  sentence,  which  is  unquestionably  the 
gist  of  the  Avhole  order  :  ^  — 

It  is  important  to  find  out  what  the  enemy 

^  See  Appendix  VII. 


264  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

(BlUclier)  is  intending  to  do ;  whether  he  Is  sep- 
arating himself  from  the  English,  or  whether 
they  are  intending  still  to  unite  to  cover  Brus- 
sels or^  [and]  Liege  in  trying  the  fate  of  an- 
other battle."  Liege  is  coupled  wdth  Brussels 
in  this  connection  simply  as  an  alternative  sup- 
position :  if  Brussels  was  to  be  covered,  the 
Prussians  must  unite  with  the  English  ;  if  Liege 
was  to  be  covered,  the  English  must  unite  with 
the  Prussians.  It  might  be  that  the  two  armies 
were  to  be  separated ;  if  so,  so  much  the  better. 
If,  on  the  other  hand,  they  were  to  try  to  unite, 
it  would  be  to  cover  either  Brussels  or  Liege. 
Any  way,  it  was  for  Grouchy  to  ascertain  their 
intentions. 

The  Emperor  had  already  told  Grouchy  very 
exjilicitly,  what  he  himself  was  going  to  do,  as 
Grouchy  informs  us  :  "  I  am  going  to  reunite  to 
the  corps  of  Marshal  Ney  the  troops  I  carry  with 
me  {i.  e.  the  sixth  corps  and  the  Guard),  to 
march  upon  the  English,  and  to  fight  them,  if 
they  will  stand  this  side  of  the  Forest  of 
Soignes,"  i.  e.  anywhere  to  the  south  of  Brussels. 

These  dispositions  being  made,  the  army  at 
Fleurus  breaks  up  :  Grouchy  takes  the  third  and 
fourth  corps  to  Gembloux ;  the  Emperor  carries 
the  sixth  corps  and  the  Guard  towards  Quatre 
Bras,  there  joining  Ney  with  the  first  and  second 
corps.     The    English,    slowly    and    in    excellent 

^  This  order  was  dictated,  not  ^^■l•itten,  by  the  Emperor; 
doubtless  the  '*  et "  should  have  been  "ou." 


WATERLOO  AND   ST.  HELENA.  265 

order,  retire  through  Genappes  to  their  chosen 
position  just  to  the  south  of  the  Httle  village  of 
Mont  St.  Jean. 

The  Emperor,  many  critics  have  thought, 
ought  to  have  employed  the  morning  in  attack- 
ing the  Duke's  forces  at  Quatre  Bras.  It  is 
urged  that,  on  the  morning  of  the  17th,  the 
Prussians  were  certainly  out  of  reach,  and  the 
English  could  with  equal  certainty  be  got  at. 
This  criticism  seems  sound.  The  Emperor,  how- 
ever, may  have  thought  that  his  troops  were  too 
fatigued  for  a  battle  on  the  17th ;  that  he  would 
be  able  to  deal  the  Enijlish  a  much  more  tellinp: 
blow  on  the  next  day ;  and  that  Grouchy' s  two 
corps  would  be  abundantly  able  to  stave  off  any 
interference  by  the  Prussians,  even  if  they  would 
not  be  able  to  join  him  in  an  attack  on  the  Eng- 
lish. Hence,  perhaps,  the  apparently  unnecessary 
delays  of  the  morning.  But  I  am  free  to  say, 
the  Emperor  seems  to  me  to  have  thrown  away 
a  great  opportunity. 

Napoleon,  it  must  be  remembered,  would  never 
have  divided  his  army  in  this  way  had  he  learned, 
as  he  ought  to  have  done  on  the  morning  of 
the  17th,  the  direction  which  the  Prussians  had 
taken.  Blucher,  although  badly  hurt  by  having 
been  unhorsed  and  in  fact  ridden  over  in  a  cav- 
alry charge  at  the  close  of  the  battle  of  Ligny, 
was  still  full  of  fight ;  and  his  able  chief  of  staff, 
Gneisenau,  issued  orders  for  the  whole  army  to 
retreat    north    upon    Wavre,    from    whence    to 


266  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

march  to  the  assistance  of  the  English,  who  had 
agreed  to  fight  at  Waterloo,  distant  some  ten 
miles  only.  This  movement  upon  Wavre,  it  is 
plain,  could  not  be  hindered  by  anything  Napo- 
leon could  now  do,  even  if  he  had  known  it  early 
in  the  mornino^.  It  would  have  been  well  enouph 
to  have  sent  a  division  of  cavalry  to  watch  the 
Prussians;  but  had  he  known  the  facts  that 
morning,  he  would  never  have  separated  his 
army  into  two  portions,  —  he  would  either  have 
attacked  the  English  at  Quatre  Bras  at  once,  or 
he  would  have  carried  the  whole  army  with  him 
to  the  position  in  front  of  Mont  St.  Jean.  From 
Napoleon's  neglect  to  ascertain  the  facts,  there- 
fore, arose  the  wholly  unnecessary,  and  in  fact 
very  hazardous,  action  of  dividing  his  army. 

When  Marshal  Grouchy  arrived  at  Gembloux 
that  evening,  he  found  that  a  large  part  of  the 
Prussians  had  retired  on  Wavre  ;  and  at  ten 
o'clock  in  the  evening  he  wrote  a  despatch,  which 
might  well  have  assured  the  Emperor  that  his  in- 
terests on  the  right  Avould  be  intelligently  taken 
care  of.  In  this  letter  he  says  that  he  has  or- 
dered General  Exelmans  to  push  six  squadrons 
on  Sart  a  Walhain,  a  village  to  the  north  of 
Gembloux,  in  the  direction  of  Wavre,  and  three 
squadrons  on  Perwez,  a  tillage  to  the  east  of 
Gembloux,  in  the  direction  of  Liege,  and  then 
says : — 

"  If  the  mass  of  the  Prussians  retire  on  Wavre, 
I  shaU  follow  it  in  that  direction,  in  order  that 


WATERLOO  AND   ST.   HELENA.  267 

they  may  not  be  able  to  gain  Brussels  and  to 
separate  them  from  Wellington. 

"  If,  on  the  contrary,  my  information  proves 
that  the  principal  force  of  the  Prussians  has 
marched  on  Perwez,  I  shall  direct  myself  by  that 
city  in  pursuit  of  the  enemy." 

When,  about  midnight  of  the  17th,  the  Em- 
peror got  this  letter,  he  may  well  have  felt  easy 
in  his  mind.  If  the  Prussians  had  gone  to  Per- 
wez, they  were  of  course  going  to  Liege,  and 
they  would  not  trouble  him  at  all.  If,  on  the 
other  hand,  they  had  gone  to  Wavre,  Grouchy 
had  said  that  he  would  follow  them  in  that  direc- 
tion, so  as  to  separate  them  from  Wellington. 
Now  he  could  not  possibly  manoeuvre  with  the 
intention  of  separating  them  from  Wellington, 
who  was  on  the  Brussels  pike,  without  approach- 
ing the  main  French  army  under  Napoleon ; 
such  a  manoeuvre  must  be  made  between  Wavre 
and  the  main  army.  To  manoeuvre  in  the  di- 
rection of  Wavre,  therefore,  necessarily  implied 
Grouchy's  approaching  the  main  army  during 
lihe  course  of  the  succeeding  day ;  and  if  he 
could  do  anything  to  separate  the  Prussians  from 
Wellington,  so  much  the  better.  As  for  his  pre- 
venting them  from  gaining  Brussels,  that  was 
plainly  impossible  ;  but  by  operating  on  the  right 
of  the  army  under  Napoleon,  he  would  at  any 
rate  prevent  their  troubling  him,  and  he  might 
even  hinder  their  crossing  the  river  Lasne  and 
joining  the  Duke. 


268  THE   FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

Before  two  o'clock  in  the  morning;  of  the  18th 
Grouchy  had  ascertained  that  the  Prussians  had 
retired  on  Wavre,  and  at  that  hour  he  wrote  to 
the  Emperor  that  he  was  going  to  Sart  a,  Wal- 
hain,  which  is  in  the  direction  of  Wavre,  and  not 
in  that  of  Perwez.  He  must  therefore  have  made 
up  his  mind  that  their  object  was  to  join  forces 
with  the  English.  Whether  this  'junction  would 
take  place  to  the  south  of  Brussels  or  not  was 
comparatively  immaterial ;  in  any  event,  it  was 
exceedingly  doubtful  if  it  could  be  prevented; 
but  the  course  for  Grouchy  to  take  was  plain 
enough,  —  it  was  to  march  as  quickly  as  he  could 
towards  the  main  army  under  the  Emperor.  His 
force  was  the  right  w4ng  of  that  army ;  it  was 
clearly  for  him  to  get  as  speedily  as  possible  be- 
tween it  and  the  Prussians.  The  Prussians  were 
at  or  beyond  Wavre,  not  ten  miles  from  the  po- 
sition where  the  Emperor  had  told  him  he  ex- 
pected to  fight  the  English  ;  he  was  at  Gembloux, 
more  than  twenty  miles  aw^ay.  There  was  no 
time  to  be  lost.  Any  delay  might  bring  upon 
Napoleon  the  pressure  of  both  the  allied  armies. 

All  this  is  very  simple ;  indeed,  Grouchy  seems 
at  ten  o'clock  in  the  evening  to  have  seen  it 
plainly  enough.  But  forgetful,  apparently,  of 
his  expressed  intention  contained  in  his  letter 
of  that  hour,  of  manoeuvring  in  the  direction  of 
Wavre  in  such  a  way  as  to  separate  the  Prussians 
from  Wellington,  he  in  his  two  o'clock  in  the 
morning  despatch  announces,  as  we  have  seen, 


CAMPAIGN    OF  WATERLOO. 

Situation  of  the  opposing  Armies  at  4  A.  IV!.,  June  18th,  1815. 

French,                                                                      Englisli,  ^ 

Napoleon's  Headquarters,           ^                      Knglish  Heailciuurters,  ^ 

GroucUy's                "                       n                      Prussians,  tr 

Prussian  Headquarters,  ^ 


WATERLOO  AND  ST.   HELENA.  269 

his  intention  of  going  to  Sart  a  Walhain,  a  step 
which  most  unnecessarily  increased  the  distance 
between  himself  and  the  turnpike.  Grouchy,  in 
fact,  instead  of  marching  so  as  to  separate  the 
Prussians  from  Wellington,  proposes  to  march  in 
such  a  direction  that  they  will  be  separating  him 
from  Napoleon.  Had  Grouchy,  when,  at  two 
o'clock  in  the  morning,  he  definitely  ascertained 
that  BlUcher  had  retired  on  Wavre,  given  orders 
for  his  troops  to  march  at  four  o'clock,  that  is,  at 
sunrise,  with  all  speed,  by  the  country  roads,  of 
which  there  are  plenty  thereabouts,  straight  for 
the  bridge  of  Mousty,  he  would  have  crossed  the 
Dyle  by  twelve  or  one  o'clock  at  furthest.  He 
would  have  been  able  with  his  two  corps  to  hold 
the  defiles  of  the  Lasne  so  as  in  all  probability 
to  have  prevented  the  Prussians  from  taking  part 
in  the  battle  that  day.  As  it  was,  he  did  not 
start  till  seven  or  eight  o'clock  in  the  morning, 
and  then  marched  towards  Wavre  by  way  of 
Sart  a  Walhain,  without  apparently  a  thought 
that  this  was  not  the  way  either  to  keep  the  Prus- 
sians separated  from  the  English,  or,  in  case  that 
should  be  found  impracticable,  to  rejoin  Napo- 
leon and  prevent  his  being  overwhelmed  by  both 
armies.  He  had  plenty  of  cavalry  with  him,  but 
he  never  seems  to  have  thought  of  sending  out 
reconnoitring  parties  on  his  left ;  still  less  of 
maintaining  frequent  communication  with  the 
Emperor.  Worse  than  this :  while  he  was  tak- 
ing his  breakfast  at  noon  at  a  jjentleman's  house 

'"V 


^#^^\^^ 


«v 


-TO  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

near  Sart  a  Walhain,  there  came  across  the  inter- 
veuioo-  miles  of  field  and  farm  the  ominous  roar 
which  told  him  that  the  battle  in  which  Napo- 
leon's fate  was  to  be  decided  had  begun.  With 
the  aid  of  the  people  of  the  place,  the  situation 
of  the  contending  armies  was  located  with  suf- 
ficient precision.  Gerard,  who  commanded  the 
fourth  corps,  urged  vehemently  that  they  should 
march  at  once  to  the  sound  of  the  cannon.  It 
was  the  ob^dous  thing  to  do,  and  it  was  a  matter 
wholly  in  Grouchy 's  discretion.  He  had  received 
no  orders,  as  some  writers  have  ignorantly  said, 
to  go  to  Wavre  ;  and  the  only  written  order  that 
he  had  received  had  warned  him  in  so  many  words 
of  the  possibility  of  the  Prussians  uniting  mth 
the  English  to  cover  Brussels  in  trying  the  fate 
of  another  battle.  That  battle  he  now  knew  had 
begun.  Coidd  he  prevent  their  uniting  with  the 
English  by  jDcrsisting  in  the  course  he  was  now 
pursmng?  On  the  contrary,  if  he  should  suc- 
ceed in  driving  them  from  Wa\Te  it  would  only 
be  to  drive  them  nearer  to  the  English.  The 
only  course  to  take  —  and  it  was,  unfortunately, 
too  late  in  the  day  to  hope  that  much  good  would 
result  from  it,  but  still  it  was  the  only  thing  to 
do^ — was  to  march  to  join  the  Emperor  as  fast 
as  his  men  could  go.  That,  at  any  rate,  might 
avert  a  catastrophe ;  and  something  more  than 
this,  while  it  could  not  perhaps  be  reasonably  ex- 
pected, still  might  be  hojjed  for.  Yet  Grouchy, 
influenced  to  a  certain  extent,  it  is  to  be  feared, 


WATERLOO  AND   ST.    HELENA.  271 

by  irritation  at  the  temper  which  Gerard  mani- 
fested, determined  not  to  yield  to  his  advice,  and 
pursued  his  useless  march  northward  to  Wavre, 
where  he  occupied  the  afternoon  in  attacking  the 
corps  of  Thielmann.  As  I  said  before,  the  Em- 
peror's inconceivable  recklessness  in  trusting  a 
man  like  Grouchy  when  he  might  have  had  Da- 
vout,  cost  him  dear. 

To  return  now  to  the  field  of  Waterloo. 

The  two  armies  which  found  themselves  face 
to  face  with  one  another  were  nearly  equal  in 
numbers.  But  that  of  Napoleon  was  not  only 
somewhat  stronger  than  that  of  his  opponent  in 
numbers,  but  was  a  far  better  army,  taken  as  a 
whole.  The  Duke,  who,  still  possessed  by  the 
notion  that  Napoleon  intended  to  turn  his  right, 
had  sent  18,000  men  off  to  Tubize  and  Hal, 
had  with  him  not  more  than  30,000  English 
troops,  including  the  King's  German  Legion ;  of 
the  rest  of  his  68,000  men,  he  may  have  placed 
confidence  in  some  15,000  to  20,000  more,  but 
the  remainder  he  rated  very  low.  He  had  agreed 
to  fight  at  Waterloo,  therefore,  only  on  the  as- 
surance which  Blticher  had  solemnly  given  him 
that  he  would  send  him  one  or  two  of  his  corps 
by  noon  at  furthest.  Had  it  not  been  for  this 
assurance,  Wellington  would  not  have  thought  of 
risking  a  battle,  especially  as,  for  anything  that 
he  knew,  Napoleon  had  united  his  entire  force 
against  him.  He  probably  had  heard  nothing 
of  two  corps  being  sent  off  under  Grouchy  to 
pursue  the  Prussians. 


272  THE   FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

The  Duke,  accordingly,  prepared  for  a  purely 
defensive  battle.  His  arrangements  were,  as  they 
always  were,  very  carefully  and  skilfully  made 
for  such  a  battle.  He  did  not,  to  be  sure, 
strengthen  his  position  by  field-works,  as  the  Rus- 
sians did  at  Borodino,  but  he  did  prepare  two 
well-built  and  solid  farmhouses  —  one  on  his  ex- 
treme right,  well  known  to  all  the  world  as  Hou- 
goumont,,and  the  other  just  in  front  of  his  left 
centre,  on  the  Brussels  turnpike,  also  well  known 
as  La  Haye  Sainte  —  for  an  obstinate  resistance. 
He  distributed  his  Enghsh  and  other  trustworthy 
troops  in  such  a  way  as  to  render  a  serious  break 
in  any  part  of  the  line  imjDrobable.  The  posi- 
tion he  held  was  an  admirable  one  for  defence. 
The  batteries  and  first  line  were  posted  on  a 
crest,  from  which  the  ground  sloped  in  front 
gently  down.  Behind  the  crest,  his  second  line 
and  reserves  could  be  to  a  great  extent  covered 
from  the  fire  of  the  French  artillery. 

It  had  rained  hard  during-  the  night,  and  the 
fields  over  which  the  French  must  advance  in 
their  attack  were  thoroughly  soaked,  and  hardly 
practicable  for  cavalry  and  artillery,  of  both  which 
arms  Napoleon  always  made  great  use.  Hence 
he  delayed  commencing  the  action  till  half  j^ast 
eleven  o'clock.  In  thus  postponing  the  battle, 
he  relied,  of  course,  on  Grouchy's  intervening 
between  the  main  army  and  the  Prussians  in  case 
the  latter  should  attempt  to  assist  the  English. 
He  supposed  that  he  was  going  to  have  the  Eng* 


WATERLOO  AND  ST.   HELENA.  273 

lish  all  to  himself,  and,  in  this  supposition,  he 
delayed  operations  until  the  ground  would  ad- 
mit of  the  free  employment  of  his  whole  force. 
He  had  with  him,  as  we  know,  the  first  corps, 
which  had  not  yet  fired  a  shot,  three  divisions 
of  the  second  corps,  the  fourth  having  been  left 
at  Ligny  to  guard  the  wounded  and  j)reserve  the 
communications,  two  divisions  of  the  sixth  corps, 
the  Guard,  and  several  fine  divisions  of  cavalry, 
—  in  all  72,000  men.  In  artillery  the  army  was 
very  strong.  He  entrusted  to  Ney  the  handling 
of  the  first  and  second  corps,  and  retained  the 
Guard  and  the  sixth  corjjs  in  reserve. 

At  half  past  eleven  the  battle  was  begun  by 
the  second  corps  making  a  furious  assault  upon 
Hougoumont.  After  an  hour  or  two  the  orchard 
and  a  part  of  the  garden  were  carried,  but  the 
English  still  held  the  chateau,  nor  could  the 
French  drive  them  out.^ 

This  attack,  however,  was  not  the  one  on  which 
the  Emperor  relied  to  win  the  battle.  His  main 
operation  was  a  movement  to  turn  the  Duke's  left. 
The  first  corps,  massed  in  deep  columns,  and 
accompanied  by  a  heavy  force  of  artillery,  ad- 
vanced from  its  position  to  a  ridge  somewhat  in 
front  of  it,  where  the  guns  were  posted.  The 
infantry  then  advanced  rapidly  on  the  allied  line. 

^  An  extension  of  the  French  left,  which  would  have  secured 
a  position  from  which  artillery  could  have  demolished  tlie  or- 
chard wall  and  even  the  chateau,  seems  to  have  been  deemed 
ijnpracticable. 

18 


274  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

The  attack  was  gallantly  made,  but  it  was  re- 
sisted with  the  admirable  steadiness  and  coolness 
of  British  soldiers.  While  d'Erlon's  columns 
were  crossing  the  valley,  they  suffered  terribly 
from  artillery  fire,  and  on  their  arrival  on  the 
English  position  they  were  staggered  by  a  brisk 
and  well  kept  up  musketry  fire  which  hindered 
their  deployment  into  line.  Seeing  their  unstead- 
iness and  confusion.  Sir  Thomas  Picton,  who 
commanded  the  English  left  wing,  orders  his 
men  to  charge  them  with  the  bayonet :  they  are 
thrown  back  into  the  valley,  and  while  endeav- 
oring to  straighten  themselves  out  are  fiercely 
charged  by  the  Royal  Dragoons,  Scots  Greys, 
and  Inniskilling  Dragoons.  Many  prisoners 
are  taken,  gunners  and  artillery  horses  sabred, 
and  several  guns  rendered  useless.  The  main 
attack  of  the  first  corps  has  been  a  complete 
failure.  A  gallant  attempt  to  carry  La  Haye 
Sainte  has  also  been  completely  repulsed. 

xThe  English,  however,  had  suffered  severely. 
Especially  in  the  death  of  Picton,  a  very  able 
and  experienced  of&cer,  who  was  killed  in  this 
affair,  a  great  loss  was  sustained.  Moreover,  the 
Hanoverian  and  Dutch  Belgian  troops  on  this 
part  of  the  line  had  become  a  good  deal  demor- 
aHzed.  The  English  cavalry,  also,  which  had 
done  good  service  on  both  sides  of  the  turnpike, 
had  allowed  themselves  to  be  carried  away  in 
their  im^^etuosity,  and  had  been  very  badly  cut 
ujD,  when  near  the  main  French  position ;  being 


WATERLOO  AND  ST.   HELENA.  275 

charged,  when  their  horses  were  blown,  by  fresh 
bodies  of  French  cavah-y.  The  English  left,  de- 
prived of  its  gallant  commander,  and  having  suf- 
fered severely  in  every  way,  was  open  to  another 
and  more  dangerous  attack. 

After  a  while,  d'Erlon  succeeded  in  re-forming 
his  corps ;  his  skirmishers  in  large  numbers  cov- 
ered the  front  of  the  English  position  east,  and 
for  a  short  distance  also  west,  of  the  turnpike. 
The  Emperor  was  about  to  make  another  attack 
on  the  English  left,  in  which  he  intended  that 
the  first  corps  should  be  supported  by  the  sixth. 

Before  the  attack  of  the  first  corps,  which  we 
have  briefly  narrated,  was  made,  the  Emperor  had 
perceived,  far  to  the  northeast,  what  appeared 
to  be  a  column  of  troops.  Cavalry  had  been  at 
once  sent  out,  and  they  now  reported  that  it 
was  the  Prussian  corps  of  Blilow,  approaching- 
from  Wavre.  Under  these  circumstances  Na- 
poleon detained  the  sixth  corps,  and  ordered  Lo- 
bau,  its  commander,  to  take  position  in  front  of 
Planchenoit,  and  protect  the  right  of  the  army. 

Napoleon  was  now  fighting  two  battles.  He 
was  fighting  the  army  under  the  Duke  with  the 
four  divisions  of  the  first  and  three  (of  the  four) 
divisions  of  the  second  corps,  containing  now 
not  much  more  than  28,000  infantry.  He  was 
fighting  the  Prussians  with  two  (of  the  three) 
divisions  of  the  sixth  corps,  containing  perhaps 
7,000  infantry.  For  the  present,  at  any  rate, 
Lobau  could  keep  the  Prussians  back.     But  un- 


276  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

less  the  infantry  of  the  Guard  should  be  put  in, 
it  was  plain  that  Ney,  who  was  in  general  charge 
of  the  main  attack  on  the  Duke  of  Wellinoton's 
army,  which  still  contained  some  40,000  infan- 
try, would  not  have  a  sufficient  force  of  infantry 
to  carry  the  enemy's  line  at  any  point.  To  put 
in  the  reserve  at  this  stage  of  the  action  was  cer- 
tainly a  step  to  be  avoided,  if  possible,  but  with- 
out more  infantry  the  position  could  not  be  car- 
ried. 

Napoleon,  however,  decided  to  allow  Ney  to 
try  the  effect  of  cavalry.  And  for  some  reason, 
which  is  not  known,  that  officer  directed  this  at- 
tack, not  agamst  the  already  enfeebled  left  wing 
of  the  Duke's  army,  but  against  its  centre ;  that 
is,  on  that  part  of  the  line  which  is  between 
Hougoumont  and  the  turnpike,  where  the  Eng- 
lish infantry,  though  they  had  been  exposed  to 
the  fire  of  artillery,  had  not  as  yet  suffered 
greatly,  and  were  still  in  perfect  order. 

Accordinofly,  the  French  cuirassiers  and  Ian- 
cers  advanced  gallantly  across  the  plateau  upon 
the  English  and  Dutch  squares.  But  they  failed 
to  break  one  of  them.  Surrounding  them,  try- 
ing in  vain  to  find  or  to  make  an  entrance,  they 
were  themselves  subjected  to  a  heavy  musketry 
fire,  and  finally,  as  might  have  been  expected, 
retired  without  having  made  any  impression. 
Ao'ain  and  ao-ain  was  the  charo-e  renewed,  but 
when  the  waves  retired,  the  rock  was  still  there. 
This  series   of  cavalry  attacks  lasted  some  two 


WATERLOO  AND   ST.  HELENA.  211 

hours,  and  greatly  exhausted  the  cavalry  engaged 
in  it.  In  fact,  Ney,  in  his  impetuosity  and  irri- 
tation, had  even  employed  without  orders  the 
heavy  cavalry  of  the  Guard,^  so  that  at  the  close 
of  these  attacks  the  French  army  was  left  with- 
out any  really  formidable  cavalry  force  for  use 
in  an  emergency. 

Still,  the  English  infantry  lost  heavily  during 
this  period  of  the  battle ;  not,  to  be  sure,  from 
the  cavalry,  but  from  the  artillery  and  skirmish- 
ing fire  which  was  steadily  kept  up  while  the 
French  cavalry  were  not  actually  riding  upon 
them.  It  was  often  impossible  to  tell  when  the 
cavalry  charges  were  impending ;  the  regiments 
did  not  dare  to  break  their  squares  and  lie 
down ;  they  remained  hopelessly  exposed  to  the 
fire  of  the  French  skirmishers,  to  which  in  this 
formation  they  could  make  no  adequate  return, 
while  the  round  shot  from  the  crest  of  the 
French  position  ploughed  through  their  ranks. 
Thus  the  effective  strength  of  the  centre  of  the 
British  army  was  greatly  diminished  by  six  in 
the  afternoon. 

On  the  English  left,  too,  the  artillery  and  skir- 
mish fire  of  the  first  corps  had  been  very  de- 
structive. It  is  certain  that  many  of  the  foreign 
regiments  in  the  Duke's  army  were  pretty  well 
exhausted,  not  to  say  demoralized,  while  many 
English  regiments  were  fearfully  reduced. 

Shortly  before  four  o'clock  Ney  made  another 

^   See  Appendix  VIII. 


278  THE   FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

effort  to  possess  himself  of  the  farmhouse  of  La 
Haye  Saiute.  This  time  he  succeeded  ;  the  bat- 
talion of  the  King's  German  Legion,  which  un- 
der Major  Baring  had  heroically  defended  the 
jDOst,  having  exhausted  its  ammunition.  This 
capture  greatly  encouraged  the  French.  It  car- 
ried with  it  also  certain  very  important  advan- 
tages. Under  cover  of  the  ground  thus  captured, 
guns  were  placed  which  enj&laded  the  allied  Hue, 
and  caused  destruction  amono^  the  EnoKsh  bat- 
teries  on  the  crest.  The  French  cavalry  could 
be  concealed  behind  the  bluffs  near  La  Haye 
Sainte,  ready  to  throw  themselves  upon  any  un- 
lucky regiment  which,  to  free  itself  from  the 
cloud  of  skirmishers  which  were  annoying  it, 
might  venture  to  deploy  from  the  square  for- 
mation into  line.  Instances  of  this  happened. 
Everything  combined  to  induce  a  general  feeling 
of  danger  and  insecurity  on  this  part  of  the 
Duke's  position.  In  fact,  there  was  at  one  time 
an  actual  gap  in  his  line,  behind  La  Haye  Sainte 
and  a  little  to  the  westward  of  the  turnpike,  to 
fill  which  the  Duke  brought  over  from  his  right 
portions  of  his  reserves.  In  spite  of  this,  how- 
ever, this  part  of  the  line  was  very  weak.  For 
an  hour  and  more  after  the  capture  of  La  Haye 
Sainte,  though  no  organized  attack  was  made  on 
the  Duke's  army,  it  was  probably  suffering  more 
than  its  antagonist  from  the  causes  which  have 
been  just  pointed  out. 

Meanwhile  Blilow,  who,  from  ignorance  on  the 


WATERLOO  AND  ST.  HELENA.  279 

part  of  the  French  staff,  probably,  of  the  nature 
of  the  miry  and  marshy  lanes  through  which 
he  would  have  to  march,  had  been  permitted 
without  molestation  to  approach  the  village  of 
Planchenoit,  had  about  half  past  four  o'clock 
marshalled  his  corps  of  30,000  men  and  attacked 
the  two  di\dsions  of  the  Count  de  Lobau.  The 
affair  went  on  with  varying  success.  The  village 
was  taken  and  retaken.  Both  sides  fought  ob- 
stinately. The  Emperor  was  obliged  to  reinforce 
Lobau  from  tune  to  time  from  the  Young  Guard. 
Finally,  about  half  past  six,  the  Prussians  seemed 
to  be  definitely  driven  back ;  and  though  the 
troops  which  had  been  used  against  them  could 
not,  of  course,  be  withdrawn  for  service  against 
the  English,  still  the  pressure  on  the  right  flank 
and  rear  of  the  French  army  was  for  the  time 
being,  at  any  rate,  relieved. 

In  this  state  of  affairs.  Napoleon  determined 
to  make  one  more  effort  to  drive  the  English 
from  the  plateau.  He  still  had  left  just  one  half 
of  the  infantry  of  the  Guard,  twelve  battalions, 
say  6,000  men.  The  remaining  twelve  battal- 
ions had  been  sent  to  reinforce  Lobau  against 
the  Prussians.  Orders  were  sent  throuo-hout  the 
whole  line  to  redouble  the  fire  of  the  artillery, 
and  that  the  troops  of  the  first  and  second 
corps  should  take  part  in  this  general  assault  on 
the  depleted  and,  as  Napoleon  supposed,  demor- 
alized line  of  Wellington's  motley  army. 

Before  this  attack  could  be  organized,  how- 


280  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

ever,  it  was  evident  that  Prussian  troops  had 
joined  the  English  left.  The  extreme  right  of 
the  first  corps  was  driven  in.  Ziethen's  corps 
had  in  fact  arrived.  About  the  same  time,  also. 
Billow  was  reinforced  by  the  leading  division  of 
the  corps  of  Pirch.  Nothing  was  heard  or  seen 
of  Grouchy  and  the  two  corps  that  were  with 
him.  The  position  of  the  army  thus  became,  in 
a  moment,  critical  in  the  extreme.  The  French 
were  now  outnumbered  by  at  least  50,000  men. 
It  was  half  past  seven  o'clock ;  dusk  was  coming 
on.  There  was,  however,  still  time  enough,  and 
there  were  still  troops  and  guns  enough  to  main- 
tain the  right  flank  of  the  army  against  the 
Prussian  attack,  which  was  the  real  danger,  if 
Napoleon  had  been  willing  to  accept  the  situa- 
tion, to  cease  taking  the  offensive,  and  to  dispose 
his  batteries,  supjiorted  by  his  reserves,  in  an  at- 
titude of  defence.  The  first  and  second  corj)s 
could  now  be  retired  in  good  order  behind  the 
guns  which  faced  the  English  army  and  com- 
manded the  intervening  ground.  The  Guard, 
which  contained  at  least  12,000  excellent  infan- 
try, and  the  sixth  corps  ought,  properly  posted, 
to  have  been  able  to  hold  the  Charleroi  road 
aofainst  the  Prussians.  There  were  still  some 
thousands  of  cavalry,  a  good  deal  used  up,  to  be 
sure,  but  preserving  perfectly  their  organization, 
and  capable  of  doing  good  service,  if  necessary. 
There  was  every  reason  to  believe  that  the  army 
could    hold    its    own    against   the   brief   attack, 


WATERLOO  AND  ST.  HELENA.  281 

which,  at  this  late  hour,  was  the  only  thing  to 
be  feared.  All  this  would  be  changed  if  the 
proposed  attack  on  the  English  line  should  be 
made  and  should  be  unsuccessful.  In  such  an 
event,  not  only  would  the  last  reserves  be  sacri- 
ficed, but  the  army  would  be  taken  in  flank  when 
engaged  in  making  a  forw^ard  movement,  and  no 
well-organized  plan  of  resistance  could  be  formed 
or  executed. 

Nevertheless,  Napoleon  ordered  a  portion  of 
the  Guard  to  attack  the  English  right  centre. 
He  probably  selected  this  point  because  it  would 
be  out  of  the  way  of  the  Prussian  troops,  which 
were  now  coming  up  on  the  English  left.  As 
we  have  seen,  this  attack  was  to  be  supported  by 
the  infantry  of  the  first  and  second  corps,  but 
the  cavalry  do  not  appear  to  have  been  expected 
to  support  it.  Nor  was  there  any  general  ad- 
vance of  the  batteries  ordered,  as  was  generally 
done  when  Napoleon  was  making  a  final  charge. 
It  is  not  easy,  in  fact  I  do  not  know  that  it  is 
possible,  to  ascertain  precisely  what  happened  in 
this  last  charge  of  the  Imperial  Guard.  There 
are  said  to  have  been  two  bodies  of  them,  —  but 
this  is  not  probable.  Crossing  the  valley  in  their 
usual  style,  in  column,  in  order  to  arrive  as 
quickly  as  possible  on  the  further  side,  and  gal- 
lantly recei\nng  the  hot  fire  of  artillery  which 
was  poured  upon  them,  thay  were  staggered  and 
brought  to  a  halt  by  a  hea^'y  flank  fire  from  the 
fifty-second    and   other   regiments,    which   they 


282  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

retiirnerl.  The  Ens^lish  foot-o^nards  opener!  on  tlie 
head  of  the  cohinin,  which  fell  back  hi  disorder. 
Then  the  fifty-second  and  other  regiments  charged 
them  in  Hank,  and  the  Guard  broke  in  confu- 
sion, and  was  pursued  even  across  the  Charleroi 
road.  All  this  took  some  time ;  and,  in  the  in- 
terval, the  right  of  the  army  had  felt  the  full 
force  of  the  attack  of  the  Prussian  corps  of  Zie- 
tlien.  Everything  w^as  giving  way.  It  needed 
but  for  the  Guard  to  retire  to  convince  the  com- 
mon soldiers  that  the  game  was  up.  The  men 
of  d'Erlon's  corps  were  the  first  to  break,  being 
taken  unawares  and  in  flank.  In  vain  Napoleon 
disposes  the  few  battalions  of  the  Guard  which 
remain  to  him  in  such  a  way  as  to  form  rallying 
points.  It  is  too  late.  On  the  right  the  Prus- 
sians break  in  like  a  torrent,  and  on  the  left 
Wellington,  seenig  the  Guard  retire,  discerns  his 
opportunity  with  the  sure  eye  of  an  able  soldier, 
and  orders  his  whole  line  to  advance.  His  re- 
serve cavalry,  —  for  he  had  with  great  judg- 
ment retained  some  fresh  brigades,  —  panting 
for  their  share  in  this  glorious  day,  bear  down 
everything  before  them.  The  fifty-second  and 
other  veteran  English  regiments,  which  had  also 
been  husbanded  as  much  as  was  possible  during 
the  fight,  drive  the  isolated  battalions  of  the 
Guard  from  place  to  place,  until  even  these  re- 
doubtable veterans  are  crushed  by  weight  of 
numbers.  The  army  is  in  full  retreat.  Napoleon 
himself,  unwilling  for  a  long  while  to  see  the 


MATTHtWiJ,    NUflTHHI 


WATERLOO  AND  ST.   HELENA.  283 

facts  as  they  actually  were,  after  staying  in  one 
of  the  squares  of  the  Guard  until  his  escape  be- 
comes very  problematical,  is  persuaded  to  quit 
his  last  field.  The  pressure  of  the  Prussians  on 
the  right  flank,  resisted  so  long  and  so  heroically 
by  Lobau  and  the  Young  Guard,  finally  over- 
comes everything.  There  is  nothing  for  the 
army  but  immediate  flight.  This  is  effected  in 
great  disorder,  according  to  all  the  accounts. 
Nevertheless,  not  many  prisoners  were  taken 
besides  the  wounded  ;  and  a  large  part  of  the 
artiUery  was  brought  off  and  carried  as  far  as 
Genappes.  Here  the  retreating  troops  had  to 
cross  a  little  bridge  over  the  Dyle.  An  effort 
was  made  to  defend  the  place.  But  the  Prus- 
sians were  too  quick  in  their  pursuit,  and  most  of 
the  guns  had  to  be  abandoned.  The  army  had 
lost  at  least  30,000  men,  and,  what  was  more,  it 
had  undoubtedly  lost  confidence  and  morale  to  a 
2"reat  deo-ree. 

Such  was  the  famous  battle  of  Waterloo.  It 
has  become  the  synonym  for  utter  defeat.  Yet 
it  was  lost  by  the  greatest  captain  of  the  age. 
The  world  has  never  ceased  to  wonder  how  such 
a  terrible  catastrophe  overtook  a  soldier  of  such 
ability  and  experience.  Volumes  upon  volumes 
have  been  written,  explaining,  criticising,  defend- 
ing, attacking.  Napoleon's  management  of  this 
campaign.  AVe  have  followed  its  course  in  suffi- 
cient detail  to  be  able,  I  think,  to  understand 
these  criticisms. 


284  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

But  before  we  approach  them  let  us  pause  to 
admire  the  loyalty  and  steadfastness  with  which 
Wellington  and  Blucher  stood  by  each  other  in 
the  trying  days  of  the  17th  and  18th  of  June, 
1815.  Wellington,  coolly  remaining  at  Quatre 
Bras  until  he  should  ascertain  beyond,  a  perad- 
venture  what  Blucher  intended  doing;  then  trust- 
ing himself  and  his  army  to  the  issue  of  a  bat- 
tle in  which  he  knew  he  should  at  the  outset  be 
outnumbered  and  outfought  by  the  army  which, 
superior  in  numbers  and  tnoral,  Napoleon  was 
sure  to  bring  against  his  miscellaneous  command  : 
obliged  to  wait  for  the  help  which  had  been  prom- 
ised him  until  nearly  the  close  of  that  terrible 
series  of  assaults  ;  fighting  with  cool  and  resolute 
determination  ;  and,  backed  up  by  his  own  Eng- 
lish officers  and  men,  successful  in  holding  his 
unstable  allies  to  the  position  he  had  chosen,  re- 
ceives and  deserves  all  honor.  Blucher,  defeated 
at  the  outset  of  the  campaign ;  disappointed  in 
not  obtaining  the  expected  assistance  of  his  ally, 
yet  determined  one  way  or  another  to  carry  out 
the  original  plan ;  unhesitatingly  incurring  the 
risk  involved  in  abandoning  direct  communica- 
tion with  his  base  of  supplies ;  inspiring  his 
beaten  troops  with  new  ardor,  and  rewarded  by 
a  success  beyond  his  hopes,  commands  the  admi- 
ration of  all  who  appreciate  the  real  soldier's 
spirit. 

The  decision  of  the  two  commanders,  made  on 
the  morning  of  the  17th,  to  unite  their  forces 


WATERLOO  AND  ST.  HELENA.  285 

at  any  risk,  involving,  as  it  evidently  did,  great 
danger,  especially  for  the  Duke's  army,  but  yet 
justifiable  as  giving  them  their  best  chance  of 
winning  the  game,  has  always  received  and  de- 
served unqualified  commendation. 

Still  there  is  no  justification  for  Wellington's 
lea\dng  those  18,000  men  at  Tubize  and  Hal 
during  that  hard-fought  day. 

Reviewing  now,  briefly,  the  facts :  — 

Up  to  the  night  of  the  16th,  Napoleon  had 
decidedly  the  advantage  over  his  antagonists. 
Though  the  attack  of  his  left  wing  under  Ney 
at  Quatre  Bras  had  not  met  with  the  decided 
success  which  would  have  attended  it,  had  not  an 
unprecedented  blunder  prevented  the  cooperation 
of  d'Erlon's  corps  in  the  action,  yet  the  English 
general  had  been  utterly  unable  to  lend  a  single 
regiment  to  his  ally,  who  had  been  defeated  al- 
most under  his  eyes.  Then  the  battle  of  Ligny, 
though  it  had  not  been  a  victory  of  the  first  class, 
yet  had  been  a  decided  success. 

The  unaccountable  neglect  of  Napoleon  and 
his  staff  to  ascertain  the  direction  in  which  the 
Prussians  had  retreated,  followed,  as  it  was,  with 
a  mistaken  conjecture  on  his  part  as  to  that  di- 
rection, and  an  unpardonable  tardiness  in  taking 
any  measures  for  pursuit,  gravely  imperilled  the 
success  of  his  plans.  Had  the  facts  been  known, 
as  they  unquestionably  might  have  been  known 
and  ought  to  have  been  known,  by  eight  in  the 
morning  of  the  17th,  Napoleon  would  not  have 


286  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

divided  his  army,  —  he  would  have  carried  it  all 
with  him  to  the  field  of  Waterloo ;  and,  suppos- 
ing everything  else  to  have  happened  as  it  did, 
he  would  have  been  able  to  hold  the  erossingfs  of 
the  Lasne  with  20,000  men,  if  necessary,  while 
he  threw  the  rest  of  his  army,  which  would  have 
numbered  85,000  men,  upon  Wellington's  posi- 
tion. The  result,  no  one  can  doubt,  would  have 
been  a  complete,  an  overwhelming  victory  for 
Napoleon. 

For  this  neglect  in  not  ascertaining  the  di- 
rection of  the  Prussian  retreat.  Napoleon  is,  of 
course,  directly  or  indirectly,  to  blame.  Nor  did 
he  make  up  for  this  neglect  by  a  sagacious  div- 
ination of  his  adversary's  intentions.  On  the 
contrary,  he  was  here  utterly  at  fault.  In  conse- 
quence of  this  double  failure,  his  not  ascertaining 
the  truth  and  not  guessing  it,  he  divided  his 
army.  His  third  mistake  was  the  delay  in  start- 
ing Grouchy.  This  was  wholly  his  fault,  and 
there  is  no  excuse  for  it.  It  added  greatly  to 
the  chances  agfainst  success. 

But  this  has  nothing  to  do  with  Grouchy's  re- 
sponsibility for  his  own  conduct.  Had  Marshal 
Grouchy,  when,  at  two  or  three  in  the  morning 
of  the  18th,  he  ascertained  the  northerly  direc- 
tion of  the  Prussian  retreat,  acted  with  common 
sense  and  promptitude,  the  battle  of  Waterloo 
might,  and  probably  would,  have  been  won  by 
the  Emperor.  Had  Grouchy  been  clear-headed 
enough  to  see  that  the  all-important  thing  for 


WATERLOO  AND  ST.  HELENA.  287 

him  now  was  to  get  between  the  main  army  and 
the  Prussians;  had  he  marched  at  daylight,  as 
fast  as  he  could  go,  for  the  bridge  of  Mousty, 
sending  out  his  cavalry  to  ascertain  what  the 
enemy  was  doing,  I  cannot  but  think  that  he 
would  have  been  able  to  cross  the  Dyle  without 
serious  molestation,  and  to  have  established  com- 
munication with  the  main  army  by  or  soon  after 
twelve  o'clock.  Had  he  done  this,  it  is  hard  to 
see  why,  with  such  a  reinforcement,  Napoleon 
could  not  have  been  free  to  employ  against  Wel- 
lington's army  the  entire  force  which  he  had 
brought  with  him ;  and  I  think  that  no  one  who 
has  studied  the  events  of  the  battle  carefully, 
especially  in  the  extremely  valuable  narrative  of 
Sir  James  Shaw-Kennedy,  who  was  in  the  best 
position  to  know  the  state  of  the  Duke's  army 
during  the  battle,  can  doubt  that  if  the  16,000 
infantry,  whom  Napoleon  was  compelled  to  with- 
hold from  the  main  attack  on  the  English  army 
and  to  use  against  the  Prussians,  had  been  em- 
ployed against  Wellington's  enfeebled  British 
and  demoralized  foreign  regiments  about  the 
time  when  La  Haye  Sainte  was  captured,  the 
Duke  would  have  been  defeated. 

Before  dismissing  the  subject  of  Marshal 
Grouchy's  conduct,  I  must  say  a  few  words  about 
the  two  despatches  which  Soult  sent  him  during 
the  day.  Several  writers  have  maintained  that 
these  despatches  show  that  Napoleon  himself 
shared  in  the  mistake  which  Grouchy  made  in 


288  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

moving  direct  to  Wavre,  and  in  not  marching  so 
as  to  place  himself  between  the  Prussians  and 
the  main  army  under  the  Emperor. 

In  the  first  of  these  despatches,  which  is  dated 
on  the  field  of  battle,  and  was  written  at  ten 
o'clock  in  the  morning,  Soult  acknowledges  the 
receipt  of  Grouchy's  despatch  dated  Gembloux 
at  ten  o'clock  the  previous  evening.  He  tells 
Grouchy  that  the  Emperor  is  about  to  attack  the 
English  army  which  has  taken  position  at  Water- 
loo. He  then  says :  "  Thus  his  majesty  desires 
that  you  will  direct  your  movements  on  Wavre, 
in  order  to  approach  us,  to  put  yourself  in  the 
sphere  of  our  operal^ons,  and  keep  up  your  com- 
munications with  us ;  pushing  before  you  those 
troops  of  the  Prussian  army  which  have  taken 
this  direction  and  which  may  have  stopped  at 
Wavre,  where  you  ought  to  arrive  as  soon  as 
possible." 

This  first  despatch  was  not  received  by  Grouchy 
till  four  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  when  he  was 
seriously  engaged  at  Wavre. 

The  second  despatch  was  dated  at  one  o'clock 
in  the  afternoon.  It  acknowledges  the  receipt 
of  his  despatch  of  two  o'clock  in  the  morning, 
announcing  that  he  was  going  to  Sart  a  Wal- 
hain.  "  Your  intention,  then,"  says  Marshal 
Soult,  "  is  to  go  to  Corbaix  and  Wavre.  This 
movement  is  conformable  to  his  majesty's  ar- 
rangements which  have  been  communicated  to 
you.     Nevertheless,  the  Emperor  orders  me  to 


WATERLOO  AND   ST.   HELENA.  289 

tell  you  that  you  ought  always  to  manoeuvre  in 
our  direction,  and  to  seek  to  come  near  to  our 
army,  in  order  that  you  may  join  us  before  any 
corps  can  put  itself  between  us.  I  do  not  indi- 
cate to  you,"  Soult  goes  on  to  say,  "  the  direc- 
tion you  should  take ;  it  is  for  you  to  see  the 
place  where  we  are,  to  govern  yourself  accord- 
ingly, and  to  connect  our  communications,  so  as 
to  be  always  prepared  to  fall  upon  any  of  the 
enemy's  troops  which  may  endeavor  to  annoy 
our  right,  and  to  destroy  them.  At  this  moment 
the  battle  is  in  progress  on  the  line  of  Waterloo 
in  front  of  the  forest  of  Soignes.  The  enemy's 
centre  is  at  Mont  St.  Jean;  manoeuvre,  there- 
fore, to  join  our  right."  A  postscript  informs 
Grouchy  that  Biilow's  corps  is  seen  on  the  heights 
of  St.  Lambert.  '^  So,"  concludes  Soult,  "  lose 
not  an  instant  in  drawing  near  and  joining  us, 
in  order  to  crush  Blilow,  whom  you  will  take  in 
the  very  act." 

This  despatch  did  not  reach  Grouchy  till  after 
seven  o'clock. 

Neither  of  these  despatches  was  received  in 
season  to  influence  Marshal  Grouchy's  move- 
ments. We  do  not  therefore  have  to  change 
our  opinion  of  the  wisdom  or  folly  of  those  move- 
ments by  any  view  we  may  take  of  the  contents 
of  these  despatches.  We  are  simply  considering 
the  charge  that  Napoleon,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
although  Grouchy  did  not  at  the  time  know  it, 
approved  of  Grouchy's  movement  upon  Wavre. 

19 


290  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

That  he  did  so  approve  is  inferred  from  the 
expression  in  the  first  despatch,  that  Grouchj' 
ought  to  arrive  at  Wavre  as  soon  as  possible,  and 
from  the  statement  in  the  second,  that  Grouchy's 
movement  upon  Corbaix  and  Wavre  is  conform- 
able to  the  Emperor's  intentions. 

But  these  critics  leave  out  of  sight  entirely 
the  main  body  of  both  despatches.  It  is  true 
that,  in  the  first  despatch,  Grouchy  is  ordered 
"  to  direct  his  movements  on  Wavre  ;  "  but  why  ? 
"So  as  to  approach  us ;  to  put  yourself  in  the 
sphere  of  our  operations,  and  keep  up  communi- 
cations with  us,"  to  use  the  language  of  the  de- 
spatch. It  is  a  necessary  imj^lication  from  this 
language  that  if,  owing  to  the  occupation  of 
Wavre  by  the  Prussians,  the  movement  pre- 
scribed would  fail  to  bring  Grouchy  within  the 
sphere  of  operations  of  the  main  army,  it  was  for 
Grouchy,  as  an  independent  commander,  to  un- 
dertake some  other  movement.  You  must  re- 
member that  Grouchy  had,  in  his  letter  of  the 
night  before,  the  receipt  of  which  is  acknowl- 
edged by  Soult  in  this  first  despatch,  stated  his 
intention  of  marching:  either  in  the  direction  of 
Wavre  or  in  that  of  Perwez,  according  as  his  in- 
formation mioht  show  the  direction  of  the  Prus- 
sian  retreat.  To  move  in  the  direction  of  Per- 
wez was  to  separate  himself  from  Napoleon ;  to 
move  in  the  direction  of  Wavre  was  to  approach 
Napoleon.  Hence  Soult  practically  says  this  : 
*^  Your  taking  the  Wavre  direction  instead  ol 


WATERLOO  AND  ST.   HELENA.  291 

the  Perwez  direction  is  all  right ;  do  so,  by  all 
means ;  direct  your  movements  on  Wavre ;  but 
remember  that  the  object  of  your  so  doing  is  in 
order  that  you  may  approach  us,  that  you  may 
put  yourself  in  the  sphere  of  our  operations,  and 
keep  up  your  communications  with  us." 

Let  any  one  now  take  the  map  and  put  him- 
self in  the  position  of  the  writer  of  this  despatch 
on  the  Brussels  turnpike,  and  he  will  see  that 
the  object  of  the  movement  prescribed,  namely. 
Grouchy 's  coming  nearer  to  the  main  army,  could 
not  be  attained,  if  the  Prussians  were  at  Wavre 
and  disposed  to  make  a  stand  there,  unless 
Grouchy  should  operate  somewhere  between  the 
main  army  and  Wavre.  No  doubt  the  despatch 
might  have  been  written  more  to  the  point ;  but 
when  it  was  written,  Napoleon  of  course  could 
not  know  the  exact  whereabouts  of  the  Prussians. 
That  they  had  gone  from  Ligny  north  towards 
Wavre  he  had  ascertained  from  his  own  observa- 
tion, as  well  as  learned  from  Grouchy's  letter  of 
the  evenino;  before.  But  that  was  all  he  knew. 
He  accordingly  tells  Grouchy  to  take  the  direc- 
tion of  Wavre  so  as  to  approach  him,  but  he  relies 
on  Grouchy's  more  exact  knowledge  of  the  po- 
sition of  the  Prussians  to  take  the  best  course 
under  the  circumstances,  to  carry  out  the  inten- 
tion and  object  of  the  order,  which  was  that 
Grouchy  should  approach  the  main  army. 

The  question  for  Grouchy  to  consider,  had 
he   got  the   order  in   season,  would  have  been, 


292  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

whether,  the  Prussians  being  in  force  at  Wavre, 
as  he  had  ascertained  was  the  fact,  in  order  to 
obey  the  order,  he  would  not  have  to  cross  the 
river,  and  to  operate  on  Wavre  on  the  west 
bank.  He  certainly  could  not  have  carried  out 
the  direction,  so  expHcit,  so  emphatic,  so  reiter- 
ated, of  approaching  the  main  army  and  putting 
hmiself  within  the  sphere  of  its  operations,  with- 
out so  doing. 

The  second  order  contains  such  precise  direc- 
tions to  join  the  main  army  that  its  meaning 
can  hardly  be  mistaken.  But  the  approval  of 
Grouchy's  expressed  intention  to  go  to  Sart  a 
Walhain,  and  thence  to  Corbaix  and  Wavre, 
it  is  not  perfectly  easy  to  explain.  Probably 
Soult  supposed  that  that  was  the  best  route  for 
Grouchy  to  take  to  come  near  the  main  army. 
That  Grouchy,  instead  of  approaching  the  main 
army,  should  go  through  Corbaix  to  Wavre,  to 
attack  a  Prussian  force  posted  there,  is  a  course 
which  it  probably  never  occurred  to  Soult  that 
Grouchy  would  adopt. 

The  remaining  incidents  of  the  campaign  need 
not  detain  us  long.  Grouchy,  who  finally  suc- 
ceeded in  driving  the  Prussian  corps  of  Thiel- 
mann  from  Wavre,  heard  the  next  morning  of 
the  defeat  of  the  Emperor,  and  by  skilful  man- 
agement effected  his  retreat,  finally  joining  the 
wreck  of  the  main  army. 

Napoleon  left  at  once  for  Paris,  leaving  Soult 
in  command.     He  doubtless  felt  that  his  reign 


WATERLOO  AND   ST.   HELENA.  293 

was  over.  He  had  chosen,  as  I  said  in  my  last 
lecture,  to  give  to  this  war  the  character  of  an 
experiment,  instead  of  the  character  of  a  seri- 
ous and  determined  struggle,  and  now  the  ex- 
periment had  failed.  Of  course,  he  may  have 
thouo-ht  that  all  that  France  was  willing  to 
attempt  at  that  time  was  one  brief  campaign, 
that  she  would  not  support  him  in  a  costly  and 
bloody  war  carried  on  in  her  own  territory.  But 
whether  it  was  with  this  idea  that  he  risked  the 
Belgian  campaign,  or  whether  it  was  that  he 
thought  that  he  saw  in  the  position  of  the  Eng- 
lish and  Prussian  armies  a  good  opportunity  for 
one  of  his  crushing  strokes,  we  do  not  know. 
All  we  know  is  that  the  whole  struggle  seemed 
to  turn  in  great  measure  on  the  success  of  this 
one  operation. 

He  found  at  once,  on  arriving  in  Paris,  that  he 
could  not  count  on  any  support  by  the  new  legis- 
lature. The  constitutional  party  were  much  more 
anxious  to  try  their  experiments  than  to  defend 
their  country.  The  people  probably  would  have 
stood  by  him,  although  the  apparently  rash  inva- 
sion of  Belgium  revived  memories  of  other  risks 
taken  and  other  armies  lost.  By  beginning  the 
war  by  a  brilliant  offensive  operation  which  to- 
tally failed.  Napoleon  had  lost  not  only  prestige, 
but  moral  support.  Had  such  a  defeat  occurred 
to  him  when  fighting  on  the  soil  of  France,  it 
would  have  intensified  the  patriotism  of  the  peo- 
ple.    As  it  was,  it  was  impossible  not  to  see  in 


294  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

the  campaign  of  Waterloo  the  old  and  familiar 
characteristics  of  Marengo  and  Aspern,  so  en- 
tirely at  variance  with  the  sober  and  resolute 
attitude  with  which  a  nation  encompassed  by  its 
foes  determines  to  fight  to  the  last  rather  than 
surrender  its  independence. 

It  is  but  just  to  Napoleon  to  admit  that  he 
frankly  accepted  the  situation.  He  saw  that 
although  he  could,  by  his  stiU  great  influence 
among  the  people  and  his  control  over  the  army, 
prolong  the  war  indefinitely,  there  w^as  no  rea- 
sonable chance  of  ultimate  success.  It  was  no 
part  of  his  plan  to  engage  France  in  a  bloody 
and  purposeless  struggle.  He  was,  very  likely, 
disappointed  not  to  see  the  representatives  of  the 
nation  rally  around  him,  press  upon  him  offers 
of  help,  and  urge  him  again  to  take  the  field. 
But  when  he  found  that  people  generally  had 
made  up  their  minds  that  it  was  useless  to  con- 
tinue the  contest,  he  allowed  no  egotism  or  vain 
confidence  to  obscure  his  perception  of  the  duty 
of  the  hour.  That  duty  was  to  give  France  im- 
mediate peace.  He  accordingly  abdicated.  A 
provisional  government  was  established,  which 
tried  to  avoid  the  necessity  of  a  second  restora- 
tion of  the  Bourbons.  But  the  liberal  members 
of  Parliament  who  were  engaged  in  this  hopeful 
project  soon  found  that  Wellington  and  Blli- 
cher,  now  that  Napoleon  was  gone,  were  not  dis- 
posed to  have  anything  to  do  with  them,  or  to 
listen   to   any  proposals  of  this  nature.     Paris, 


WATERLOO  AND  ST.  HELENA.  295 

where  the  army  had  been  concentrated  under 
Marshal  Davout,  was  surrendered  by  a  conven- 
tion dated  the  3d  of  July,  and  the  army  retired 
behind  the  Loire.  Before  long,  the  whole  matter 
was  settled.  On  the  8th  of  July  Louis  XV III. 
resumed  his  throne ;  and  on  the  15th  of  July 
Napoleon  surrendered  himself  to  the  British 
government  on  board  of  the  man-of-war  Beller- 
ophon. 

I  am  not  disposed  to  blame  the  British  min- 
istry for  exiling  their  illustrious  prisoner  to  St. 
Helena.  It  certainly  would  not  have  been  easy 
to  suggest  any  other  disposition  of  the  fallen 
Emperor.  The  situation  was  one  of  those  for 
which  there  are  no  precedents  and  no  laws.  Na- 
poleon was  in  the  prime  of  life.  He  was  a  man 
of  inextinguishable  energy.  He  still  had,  with- 
out any  possibility  of  doubt,  a  great  hold  on  the 
people  of  France.  Had  he  been  allowed  to  re- 
tain his  throne  in  1814,  as  he  ought  to  have 
been,  the  question  of  his  exile  woidd  never  have 
arisen.  But  the  allies,  having  most  unwarrant- 
ably taken  upon  themselves  to  force  upon  France 
a  government  other  than  that  of  the  man  she 
preferred,  were  obliged,  when  they  had  succeeded 
in  their  object,  to  dispose  of  Napoleon.  And 
there  was  really  nothing  else  to  do  with  him 
than  to  consign  him  to  some  distant  spot  from 
which  he  would  be  unable  to  escape.  For  this 
purpose  St.  Helena  was  no  doubt  as  good  as  any 
other  island. 


296  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

Napoleon's  life  at  St.  Helena  is  not  an  agree- 
able study.  No  man  not  a  philosopher,  and  a 
philosopher  too  of  the  most  placid  and  amiable 
disposition,  could  possibly  have  undergone  such 
a  sudden  and  tremendous  change  in  his  sur- 
rounilinofs  and  manner  of  life  without  showing^ 
its  bad  effects  in  an  irritabiHty,  moroseness,  de- 
spondency, never  seen  before.  In  Napoleon  all 
these  traits  were  developed  to  a  greater  or  less 
extent,  for  he  was  by  no  means  a  philosopher. 
Yet  he  made  many  fast  friends  at  Long  wood. 
Those  about  him  became  devotedly  attached  to 
him.  He  numbered  amons"  his  admirers  not  a 
few  of  the  good  people  among  the  English  gar- 
rison and  residents.  He  resolutely  and  with  a 
laudable  industry  undertook  writing  commenta- 
ries on  his  own  wars.  In  Gourgaud  and  Mon- 
tholon  he  found  most  intelligent  secretaries ;  in 
Las  Casas  he  had  a  valued  and  wise  friend  ;  with 
the  Bertrands  his  intercourse  was  most  familiar 
and  intimate.  There  is  after  all  much  in  his  St. 
Helena  life  that  it  is  pleasant  to  look  at. 

His  treatment  by  the  English  government 
would  have  been  well  enough,  had  it  not  begun 
with  the  exasperating  and  gratuitous  humilia- 
tion of  denying  him  his  proper  title  of  Emperor.^ 
For  this  unnecessary  and  indefensible  course  no 
ajDology,  even,  can  be  made.  Except  in  this  re- 
spect, Napoleon's  treatment  by  the  English  was 
that  accorded  to  a  prisoner  of  war,  who  was  a! 

1  See  Appendix  IX. 


WATERLOO  AND   ST.   HELENA.  297 

lowed  a  good  degree  of  liberty.  The  expenses 
of  his  maintenance  and  that  of  his  friends  were 
borne  by  the  English  government,  and  while  no 
extravagance  was  permitted,  there  was  no  par- 
simony shown.  As  a  rule,  the  English  officers 
treated  the  prisoner  with  courtesy  and  respect. 
I  do  not  know  how  it  may  have  been  with  Sir 
Hudson  Lowe ;  I  have  never  thought  it  worth 
my  while  to  get  at  the  facts  of  that  disagreeable 
and  interminable  controversy.  There  was  prob- 
ably fault  on  both  sides. 

Fortunately  for  the  world,  the  sayings  and 
writings  of  Napoleon  at  St.  Helena  have  been  in 
great  part  preserved.  The  narratives  of  his  cam- 
paigns are  always  lucid,  forcible,  and  most  inter- 
esting. As  for  the  mistakes  that  are  to  be  found 
in  them,  and  they  are  many,  I  am  well  aware 
that  it  is  the  fashion  to  call  them  wilful  perver- 
sions of  the  truth.  But  when  we  take  into  ac- 
count the  innumerable  multitude  of  facts  which 
these  narratives  comprise,  and  the  confessed  in- 
ability of  Napoleon  at  St.  Helena  to  refresh  and 
correct  his  memory  by  official  and  other  papers 
and  by  the  recollections  of  his  officers,  the  charge 
of  mendacity  has  precious  little  to  rest  upon. 
Those  of  us  who  have  ever  made  a  study  of  any 
of  our  own  campaigns,  who  have  endeavored  to 
reconcile  the  conflicting  statements  of  living  ac- 
tors and  the  opposing  narratives  of  official  re- 
ports, will  be  much  more  inclined  to  marvel  at 
the  accuracy  of  Napoleon's  narratives  than   to 


298  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

suspect  him  of  wilful  omissions  or  misstatements. 
Assuredly,  never  were  accounts  so  generally  cor- 
rect composed  under  such  serious  disadvantages. 
But  the  idea  of  going  to  such  narratives  as  these, 
which  do  not  profess  to  be  anything  but  the  rec- 
ollections of  one  of  the  chief  actors,  which  do 
not  pretend  to  be  carefully  made  up  from  official 
and  other  papers,  with  the  expectation  of  finding 
minute  accuracy  in  dates  and  numbers,  is  the 
idea  either  of  a  fool  or  an  enemy.  No  man  of 
sense  would  be  so  silly  as  to  expect  this  accu- 
racy ;  and  he  who,  on  returning  from  such  a 
quest,  parades  before  the  public  his  discovery  of 
a  mistake  here  or  an  error  there,  is  a  jDartisan  so 
bigoted  that  it  is  not  worth  our  while  to  spend 
any  powder  on  him.  The  St.  Helena  narratives 
give  us  in  the  main,  undoubtedly,  the  key  to 
Napoleon's  plans,  the  views  he  entertained,  the 
projects  he  contemplated.  Whenever  it  is  nec- 
essary to  obtain  strict  accuracy  in  details,  a  histor- 
ical student  will  of  course  considt  contemporary 
documents,  instead  of  any  man's  recollections. 

After  a  few  years  of  this  uneventful  and  re- 
stricted life  his  health  gave  way,  and  on  the  5th 
of  May,  1821,  he  died.  On  his  body  were  found 
several  scars,  showing  that  he  had  more  than 
once  concealed  the  fact  of  a  slight  wound  or  con- 
tusion from  the  knowledge  of  the  army.  It  was, 
in  truth,  impossible  that  he  should  have  entirely 
escaped  the  perils  of  so  many  battle-fields. 

He  was  buried  with  military  honors,  rendered 


WATERLOO  AND   ST.  HELENA.  299 

to  him  by  the  British  garrison  of  St.  Helena. 
The  spot  selected  for  his  grave  was  a  quiet  val- 
ley. The  tomb  itself  was  sheltered  by  a  weeping 
willow.  Shoots  of  this  famous  tree  have  since 
been  planted  throughout  the  world. 

Returning  now  to  Europe.  The  second  down- 
fall of  Napoleon  intensified  the  reaction  against 
liberal  ideas  which  had  been  for  the  preceding 
two  years  increasing  in  violence.  In  France, 
the  Bourbons  returned  in  a  vindictive  temper. 
The  leading  officers  of  the  army  were  at  once 
proceeded  against.  Soult  and  Grouchy  saved 
themselves  by  flight.  The  convention  of  Paris 
of  the  3d  of  July,  the  twelfth  article  of  which 
provided  that  no  one  should  be  called  to  account 
for  his  conduct  during  the  hundred  days,  was 
disregarded,  and  Ney,  though  clauning  its  pro- 
tection, was  tried  for  treason  and  executed.  It 
is  not  to  the  credit  of  Wellington  that  he  did 
not  insist  upon  the  king's  respecting  the  terms 
which  had  been  gi'anted  by  this  convention,  the 
consideration  for  which  was  the  peaceable  evacu- 
ation of  the  capital  by  a  powerful  French  army. 
Far  otherwise  did  General  Grant  act  when  it  was 
proposed  to  try  the  Confederate  officers  for  high 
treason.  By  his  energetic  remonstrances  made 
to  his  government,  he  maintained  the  inviolabil- 
ity of  the  paroles  he  had  granted.  Wellington, 
on  the  other  hand,  pretended  that  it  was  not  the 
intention  of  the  article  to  restrain  the  French 
government  from  acting  as  it  might  deem  fit. 


300  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

but  only  to  restrain  himself  and  Marshal  Blucher 
from  perpetratmg  any  atrocities !  Had  such  a 
construction  been  given  to  the  convention  at  the 
time,  it  stands  to  reason  that  Davout  and  Ney 
and  the  rest  would  never  have  accepted  it.  They 
were  all  in  the  same  boat,  and  as  for  the  army,  it 
would  have  stood  by  them  to  a  man.  Paris  would 
have  been  defended  to  the  last,  and  thousands 
of  lives  would  have  been  sacrificed  before  it 
could  have  been  taken.  But  the  position  taken 
by  the  Duke  is  obviously  absurd.  What  danger 
was  there  that  the  English  and  Prussian  generals 
would  punish  anybody  for  his  conduct  during  the 
hundred  days?  Clearly  none  whatever.  The  only 
danger  apprehended  —  the  danger  to  meet  which 
the  article  in  question  was  inserted  —  was  that 
of  retribution  being  inflicted  by  Louis  XVIII. 
for  the  support  given  to  Napoleon.  The  Duke's 
contention  as  to  the  import  of  the  article  ren- 
ders it  absolutely  nugatory.  It  is  in  fact  very 
hard  to  believe  Wellington  sincere  in  the  view 
which  he  puts  forth.  Certain  it  is  that  he  left 
Ney  to  his  fate,  without  making  even  an  effort 
to  save  him.  We  are  irresistibly  impelled  to  re- 
call Nelson's  action  towards  the  Neapolitan  pris- 
oners in  1798,  when  he  set  the  capitulation  aside, 
and  had  Caraccioli  hanged  from  the  yard-arm 
of  an  English  frigate.  But  though  Wellington 
would  never  have  touched  a  hair  of  Ney's  head 
himself,  he  nevertheless  stood  still  and  saw  with 
complete  indifference  the  articles  of  the  conveu' 


WATERLOO  AND  ST.   HELENA.  301 

tion  brutally  violated.  Had  he  chosen  to  inter- 
fere, a  word  from  him  would  have  sufficed.  The 
conqueror  of  Waterloo  could  not  have  been  ig- 
nored by  the  restored  king,  especially  when  in- 
sisting upon  the  proper  effect  being  given  to  the 
terms  of  a  military  convention  to  which  he  had 
been  one  of  the  principal  parties.  There  is  no 
excuse  for  Wellington's  course  in  this  matter. 

On  the  continent  generally  there  came  after 
the  battle  of  Waterloo  a  revival  of  all  the  old- 
fashioned  notions  about  legitimacy  and  privilege. 
The  normal  development  of  liberal  ideas  in  gov- 
ernment and  legislation  in  France,  Italy,  and 
western  Germany  was  forcibly  checked.  The 
influence  of  St.  Petersburg,  Berlin,  Vienna,  was 
for  the  time  being  dominant.  In  fact,  it  was 
not  very  long  before  the  attitude  of  the  three 
great  reactionary  powers  became  too  pronounced 
even  for  the  English  Tories  and  the  French  Bour- 
bons. Except,  however,  in  England  and  France, 
the  reaction  (or  the  "  Liberation  of  Europe,"  as 
some  good  people  prefer  to  call  it)  had  full 
swing.  The  series  of  insurrections  and  atroci- 
ties in  Spain,  culminating  in  the  armed  interven- 
tion of  France  in  1823  to  reseat  the  Bourbons 
on  the  throne ;  the  Austrian  oppression  in  Lom- 
bardy  and  Venice ;  the  terrible  misgovernment 
of  Naples ;  the  bloody  suppression  of  the  Polish 
struggle  for  independence,  and  of  the  Hungarian 
contest  for  ancient  rights  ;  the  Holy  Alliance,  — 
these  and   many  other  features  of   the   period 


302  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

which  succeeded  the  fall  of  Napoleon  show  what 
a  retrogression  had  taken  place.  During  all 
this  time  Napoleon's  fame  was  steadily  gaining. 
People  in  western  Europe  looked  back  upon  the 
early  years  of  the  century,  and  saw  that  they  had 
mistaken  the  transitory  repression,  the  military 
dictatorship,  incident  to  a  state  of  war,  for  sys- 
tematic tyranny,  and  had  been  deluded  by  the 
war-cries  of  1813  into  exchanging  the  fundamen- 
tally equal  and  liberal  government  of  France  and 
the  Confederation  for  the  fundamentally  unequal 
and  aristocratic  government  of  Austria  and  Prus- 
sia, supported  and  backed  up  by  the  unblushing 
absolutism  of  the  Russian  Czar.  They  saw  that 
in  spite  of  his  faults,  in  spite  of  his  defects.  Na- 
poleon had  been  the  man  of  the  time ;  that  he 
had  understood  the  needs  and  the  capacity  of 
the  people  in  his  day  and  generation.  It  was  in 
fact  owing  solely  to  the  wise  and  liberal  laws 
which  he  introduced  at  so  much  pains  into  the 
countries  which  had  composed  the  French  Em- 
pire, that  the  reaction  of  1814  and  1815  did  not 
work  a  permanent  injury  to  the  cause  of  Euro- 
pean liberty. 

The  just  credit  due  to  Napoleon  in  this  great 
struggle  has  always  been  withheld  from  him  by 
liberal  writers.  They  dwell  on  his  seizure  of 
the  supreme  power  in  France  on  the  18th  of 
Brumaire,  on  his  assumption  of  imperial  dignity, 
on  his  despotic  and  military  rule,  on  his  well- 
known   dislike   of  representative  bodies.     They 


WATERLOO  AND   ST.    HELENA.  303 

fail  to  see  that  France  at  the  beginning  of  this 
century  was  wholly  unlit  for  a  republican  form  of 
government,  that  her  people  at  that  time  were, 
and  necessarily  must  have  been,  utterly  unable 
to  govern  themselves ;  that  the  only  thing  that 
anybody  could  do  for  them  was  to  secure  to 
them  in  permanent  institutions  the  benefit  of  the 
immense  reforms  and  changes  of  the  Revolution. 
This  Napoleon  did,  and  this  was  his  great  work. 
To  defend  France,  thus  reconstituted,  against  her 
foes,  both  foreign  and  domestic,  it  was  necessary 
to  consolidate  the  administrative  functions  of  the 
government.  But  this  was  not  to  enslave  her, 
but  merely  to  postpone  to  a  more  peaceful  time 
her  entrance  upon  the  long  and  difficult  course 
which  her  people  needed  for  their  education  in 
popular  government. 

What,  however,  has  been  refused  to  Napoleon 
by  liberal  writers  and  historians  has  always  been 
cheerfully  given  to  him  by  the  people.  For,  in 
spite  of  all  the  open  hostility  and  the  bitter  and 
venomous  hate  of  which  Napoleon  has  been  and 
still  is  the  object,  the  mass  of  mankind  have 
always  recognized  that  he  was  in  the  main  on 
the  right  side,  and  that  in  him  the  good  cause 
of  our  common  humanity  had  a  powerful  helper. 
There  never  was  a  country  over  which  he  ruled, 
either  mediately  or  immediately,  which  he  did 
not  make  a  freer  and  happier  country  than  it 
was  when  he  took  charsre  of  it.  Fio-htinsr  as  he 
was,  all  his  life  long,  coalition  after  coalition  of 


304  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

the  nations  of  legitimist  Europe,  he  did  not  neg- 
lect to  consolidate  the  newly  gained  liberties  of 
his  country  in  his  Code.  It  is  true  that  he  could 
not  in  the  turmoil  and  danger  of  constant  war  do 
much  towards  even  a  Beginning  of  representative 
government.  But  the  important  thing  was  pre- 
cisely that  which  he  did  attend  to.  Whether  all 
the  adult  males  of  a  country,  or  only  some  of 
them,  and  if  only  some,  which,  shall  exercise  the 
franchise,  are  questions  the  answers  to  which  may 
be  exceedingly  various,  without  much  affecting 
people's  rights  to  life,  liberty,  and  the  pursuit 
of  happiness.  Certain  it  is  that  France  was  de- 
prived by  Napoleon  of  no  liberties  which  her 
people  had  ever  enjoyed,  of  no  rights  which 
they  had  ever  exercised.  Moreover,  it  was  due 
to  his  strong  arm  and  wise  direction  that  the 
fundamental  changes  which  had  been  brought 
about  by  the  Revolution  were  not  swept  away  by 
an  earlier  return  of  the  Bourbons. 

I  do  not  claim  for  Napoleon  the  praise  due  to 
a  great  philanthropist.  The  honor  we  pay  to 
a  clear-headed,  intelligent,  enterprising  business 
man,  who,  being  largely  interested  in  manufac- 
tures, let  us  say,  undertakes  the  improvement  of 
a  factory-town,  who  cleans  out  the  filthy  dens 
where  the  operatives  have  been  wont  to  lodge, 
who  repairs  the  defective  sewerage,  who  builds 
new  and  convenient  houses,  who  introduces  prac- 
tical reforms  into  every  department  of  the  life  of 
that  town,  is  certainly  not  the  honor  which  we 


WATERLOO  AND  ST.  HELENA.  305 

give  to  a  John  Howard  or  an  Elizabeth  Fry ; 
yet  it  is  a  real  tribute  of  honor  nevertheless.  If 
we  see  such  a  man  opposed  and  thwarted  at 
every  turn  by  blind  conservatism,  his  efforts  at 
enlightenment  and  sanitary  reform  and  the  eleva- 
tion of  the  poor  people  derided,  and  attributed 
to  mere  selfish  greed  of  money,  our  sympathies 
and  our  good  wishes  are  with  that  man.  We 
see  that  he  is  on  the  right  side  in  the  universal 
contest  of  human  life  and  work.  Nor  do  we 
wonder  greatly  if  we  find  in  him  the  faults  and 
defects  that  are  peculiar  to  men  of  his  stamp ;  if 
we  see  with  sorrow  that  in  him  enterprise  some- 
times becomes  rashness,  and  resolution  verges 
upon  obstinacy ;  that  in  his  determination  to 
carry  through  his  reforms  he  is  sometimes  care- 
less of  the  rights  of  others  and  intolerant  of 
their  weakness  and  folly.  Nay  more,  even  if 
we  find  him  so  wilful  and  so  rash  that  in  the 
end  his  enterprises  fail,  and  his  narrow-minded 
opponents  are  able  to  triumph  over  him,  not 
even  then  do  we  forget  that,  after  all,  this  man 
has  been  the  best  friend  and  helper  that  that 
town  ever  had.  Our  sympathies  and  our  judg- 
ment are  still  with  him,  and  not  with  his  bigoted 
though  more  fortunate  enemies. 

'^  Render  therefore  unto  Ccesar  the  things 
which  are  Ccesar' s.''  While  we  do  not  hesitate 
to  speak  with  proper  severity  of  Napoleon's  reck- 
less course  in  1813  and  1814,  of  his  obstinate 
adherence  to  a  mihtary  solution  of  the  difficulties 

20 


3D6  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

which  encompassed  his  Empire,  of  his  indiffer- 
ence as  a  soldier  to  the  evils  of  war,  of  his  for- 
getfulness  as  a  soldier  of  his  duties  as  a  sover- 
eign, —  while  we  recognize  these  defects  and 
faults,  let  us  be  equally  frank  in  acknowledging 
his  great  qualities,  —  his  untiring  industry,  his 
devotion  to  the  public  service,  his  enlightened 
views  of  government  and  legislation,  his  human- 
ity. 

I  know  that  there  is  a  short  and  easy  way  of 
disposing  of  this  evidence.  It  is  only  necessary 
to  beheve  that  in  all  his  labors  he  was  impelled 
solely  by  selfish  motives,  and  all  his  wise  meas- 
ures, his  laborious  tasks,  his  consistent  further- 
ance of  humane  and  liberal  legislation,  go  for 
nothing  in  the  minds  of  some  people.  But  I 
cannot  think  that  such  a  wholesale  mode  of  dis- 
posing of  a  man's  life-work  as  throwing  light  on 
his  character  and  motives,  requires  any  serious 
refutation.  People  who  accept  such  a  theory  as 
this  have  made  up  their  minds,  and  no  amount 
of  testimony  can  convince  them.  Undoubtedly, 
Napoleon,  in  common  with  us  all,  had  his  own 
interest  and  advancement  in  view  all  through  his 
career.  That  goes  without  saying.  But  if  he 
is  to  be  found  guilty  of  the  charge  of  selfishness 
in  the  opprobrious  sense  of  that  word,  his  accus- 
ers should  be  able  to  point  to  some  instances  at 
least  where  he  preferred  his  own  pleasures  or 
gains  or  fame  to  the  public  welfare.  As  for 
his  pleasures  or  his  gains,  they,  as  is  admitted, 


WATERLOO  AND  ST.   HELENA.  307 

never  interfered  with  his  public  duties.  And  it 
would  be  a  task  well-nigh  impracticable  to  point 
out  how  he  could  have  preferred  his  own  fame 
to  the  public  good,  since  it  was  only  in  the  suc- 
cessful conduct  of  public  affairs  that  he  could 
make  his  reputation. 

Other  unfriendly  critics  have  derived  great 
comfort  and  support  by  comparing  Napoleon 
with  those  distinguished  public  servants  who, 
like  Washington  and  Wellington,  had  their  well 
defined  duties  to  perform  towards  a  recognized 
political  superior,  and  performed  those  duties 
faithfully.  But  this  is  to  commit  the  blunder  of 
trying  the  head  of  a  great  concern,  who  is  his 
own  master,  by  the  standard  applicable  to  his 
clerk.  The  well-marked  and  intelligible  round 
of  duty  prescribed  to  an  inferior  furnishes  no 
criterion  by  which  we  can  determine  whether  his 
superior  fully  recognizes  his  responsibility  for 
the  talents  committed  to  his  charge,  and  for  the 
improvement  of  which  he  is  accountable  to  no 
one  on  earth. 

The  fact  is,  the  character  of  Napoleon  must 
to  a  certain  extent  be  left  undetermined.  It  is 
not  probable,  as  it  seems  to  me,  that  it  was  a 
strong  or  deep  character ;  that  in  him  there  ex- 
isted any  very  definite  and  solemn  recognition  of 
his  responsibilities  ;  that  his  life  was  a  struggle  to 
come  up  to  the  requirements  of  an  educated  and 
vigilant  conscience.  Be  it  so.  Nevertheless,  it 
remains  true,  that  his  powers  were  always  at  the 


308  THE  FIRST  NAPOLEON. 

service  of  the  public ;  that  his  efforts  as  a  whole 
were  on  the  right  side ;  that  he  was  the  unspar- 
ing foe  of  tyranny  and  injustice ;  and  that  he  did 
more  than  any  man  of  his  time  to  relieve  the 
masses  of  the  people  of  Europe  from  the  bur- 
dens which  oppression  and  intolerance  had  laid 
upon  them,  and  to  open  to  them  the  prospects 
and  hopes  which  under  a  liberal  and  enhghtened 
government  give  to  life  so  much  of  its  enjoy- 
ment and  value.  He  must  be  classed  among  the 
friends  and  helpers  of  the  race. 


APPENDIX  I. 

LECTURE  I. 

ON  napoleon's  occasional,  severities. 

It  is  not  inconsistent  with  the  views  here  presented 
of  the  character  of  Napoleon,  that  we  should  find  him 
occasionally  resorting  to  measures  of  extreme  severity. 
Where  it  seemed  to  him  to  be  necessary,  in  order  to 
preserve  his  army,  to  suppress  dangerous  insurrections, 
or  the  like,  he  rarely  hesitated  to  employ  what  seemed 
to  him  the  most  sure  mode  of  accomplishing  his  object. 
It  is  in  this  way  that  we  must  account  for  the  whole- 
sale execution  of  the  prisoners  at  Jaffa,  most  of  whom, 
having  been  recently  released  on  parole,  were  found 
again  in  arms  against  the  French.  In  a  similar  light 
we  should  regard  the  severities  which  accompanied  the 
final  extinction  of  the  insurrections  in  La  Vendee,  and 
those  which  he  recommended  his  brother  Joseph  to 
employ  against  the  fierce  and  obstinate  resistance  of 
the  Neapolitan  lazzaroni.  In  this  vmhesitating  em- 
ployment of  force  on  occasions  of  this  nature,  Napo- 
leon much  resembled  Cromwell. 

But  this  sort  of  thing  does  not  constitute  a  man  a 
tyrant,  or  even  a  harsh  ruler.  The  stability  of  socie- 
ty, the  weKare  of  well-disposed  citizens,  the  interests 
of  progress  and  of  liberal  government  even,  may  well, 
in  times  of  turmoil  and  revolution,  be  more  secure 


310  APPENDIX  II. 

when  entrusted  to  the  hands  of  such  a  man,  than  if 
committed  to  the  charge  of  one  less  practical  and  less 
inflexible. 


APPENDIX  11. 

LECTURE  I. 

ON  napoleon's  hold  on  his  soldiers. 

A  FEW  illustrations  of  the  wonderful  hold  upon  his 
troops  that  Napoleon  possessed  may  be  not  without 
interest  in  this  connection.  Sir  Robert  ^^'ilson,  who 
served  in  the  Russian  army  in  1812,  in  his  account  of 
the  retreat  from  Russia  says :  — 

"  The  atmosphere  seemed  to  be  rarefied  till  it  became 
quite  crisp  and  brittle. 

"  The  enemy,  already  afflicted  by  hunger,  fatigue,  sick- 
ness, and  wounds,  were  ill  prepared  for  this  new,  though 
always  certain  calamity.  From  this  time  a  state  of  feeling 
prevailed  that  denaturabzed  humanity  —  a  general  reckless- 
ness pervaded  all  —  a  callousness  to  every  consideration  but 
selfish  momentary  relief,  vnth  one  honorable  exception  in 
favor  of  the  French,  who,  when  captive,  could  not  be  in- 
duced by  any  temptation,  by  any  thi'eats,  by  any  privations, 
to  cast  reproach  on  their  Emperor  as  the  cause  of  their  mis- 
fortunes and  sufPerings.  It  was  '  the  chance  of  war,'  '  un- 
avoidable difficulties,'  and  'destiny,'  but  'not  the  fault  of 
Napoleon.' 

"  The  famished,  dying  of  hunger,  refused  food  rather 
than  utter  an  injurious  word  against  their  chief  to  mdulge 
and  humor  vindictive  inquirers."  ^ 

^  Narrative  of  Events  during  the  Invasion  of  Russia  by  Napo- 
leon Bonaparte,  and  the  Retreat  of  the  French  Army,  1812.  By 
General  Sir  Robert  Wilson,  K.  M.  T.  Second  edition:  London; 
John  Murray,  Albemarle  Street,  1860,  page  254. 


APPENDIX  IL  311 

To  the  same  effect  I  cite  a  touching  story  from 
rather  an  out  of  the  way  source :  — 

"  The  next  morning,  after  breakfast "  [Napoleon  had 
fallen  and  the  aUied  armies  had  entered  France  in  1814J, 
"  Dame  Prieure,  with  another  Sister,  accompanied  their 
guests  over  the  wards  of  the  hospital  [at  Boulogne].  They 
stopped  at  the  bedsides  of  some  of  the  soldiers,  many  of 
whom  were  disabled  from  old  wounds  ;  others,  the  survivors 
of  the  Russian  campaign,  were  still  suffering  intensely  from 
frost-bites  and  the  amputation  of  their  limbs.  Most  of  them 
appeared  miserably  weak  and  dejected  from  the  pain  they 
had  endured  and  all  the  hardsliips  they  had  undergone. 
IVIr.  Sidney's  daughter  observed  to  one  of  them, 

"  '  Are  you  not  glad  we  now  have  peace  ?  You  must  be 
rejoiced  to  hear  that  Buonaparte,  who  had  drawn  you  all 
from  your  homes  and  families,  is  safe  out  of  the  way  at 
last.' 

"  '  Madame,'  replied  a  mere  boy  of  a  soldier,  who  had  lost 
both  his  feet,  '  de  qui  parlez  vous  ?  de  notre  Empereur  ?  ' 

"  '  What,'  said  the  lady,  '  do  you  stiU  call  him  so  ? ' 

"  '  Certainly,'  he  replied  ;  '  we  woidd  all  willingly  die 
for  him ! '  and  at  the  top  of  his  feeble  voice,  he  suddenly 
shouted  out,  '  Vive  I'Empereur  ! ' 

"  All  the  rest  in  the  ward,  which  was  exclusively  for  sol- 
diers, joined  at  once  in  the  same  cry,  and  the  effect  became 
almost  deafening,  as  those  in  the  adjoining  wards  united 
with  their  comrades  in  the  same  hearty  demonstration.  It 
was  even  taken  up  by  the  soldiers  occupying  a  higher  story, 
and  '  Vive  I'Empereur !  '  resounded  through  the  whole  build- 
ing with  wonderful  energy  by  all  who  were  capable  of  mak- 
ing themselves  heard.  The  poor  nuns  ran  away,  stopping 
their  ears,  and  saying,  '  Oh  mechants,  mediants  enfans ! 
Stop  your  cries ;  this  cannot  be  allowed.'  At  last  the 
noise  subsided,  and  quiet  being  restored,  the  good  Sisters 
proceeded  with  their  guests  to  other  departments  of  the 
hospice."  ^ 

^  From  A  Hundred  Years  A  go ;   or,   A  Narrative  of  Events 


S12  APPENDIX  11. 

A  little  volume  entitled,  "  Reminiscences  of  Army 
Life  imder  Napoleon  Bonaparte,"  by  Adelbert  J.  Doisy 
De  Villargennes,  former  vice-consul  of  Italy  at  Cin- 
cinnati (Cincinnati,  Robert  Clarke  &  Co.,  1884),  has 
recently  appeared,  from  which  I  make'  the  following 
citation  (pp.  12-18)  :  — 

"  After  the  battles  of  Eckmiihl  and  Ratisbon,  a  magnifi- 
cent avenue  leading  to  the  latter  city  had  been  totally  ruined 
by  the  passage  of  upwards  of  two  hundred  thousand  men. 
The  Emperor  ordered  it  to  be  repaired,  and  a  company  of 
infantry  was  posted  at  each  extremity,  with  the  express 
command  not  to  allow  any  one  to  enter  it  on  horss^ack. 
General  Vandamme,  as  well  known  for  his  bravery  as  for  the 
exti'eme  rudeness  of  his  manners,  presented  himself  on  his 
horse  at  the  entrance  of  the  avenue,  and  was  proceeding 
further,  when  the  sentry  on  duty,  a  raw  young  recruit,  came 
forward  and  stated  the  orders  he  had  received.  *  General 
Vandamme  passes  anywhere,'  exclaimed  Vandamme;  'get 
out  of  the  way.'  On  the  soldier's  appearing  to  insist,  the  gen- 
eral gave  him  a  blow  of  his  whip  across  the  face,  cursing  his 
impudence.  The  young  lad,  intimidated,  was  about  to  yield, 
when  the  captain  who  commanded  at  the  post,  and  who, 
walking  about,  had  witnessed  the  scene,  rushed  toward  the 
sentry,  snatched  the  musket  violently  out  of  his  hands,  and, 
running  in  front  of  the  general,  levelled  the  piece  at  him, 
exclaiming,  '  General,  if  you  advance  one  step  more  I  will 
shoot  you  like  a  dog  for  daring  to  treat  my  sentry  as  you 
have  done.'  Vandamme,  seeing  at  once  whom  he  had  to 
deal  with,  thought  it  best  to  comply,  and  withdrew,  mutter- 
ing a  threat  to  revenge  himself  on  the  bold  captain. 

"An  opportunity  soon  presented  itself.  General  Van- 
damme, being  the  temporary  governor  of  Ratisbon,  on  vis- 
iting the  different  posts,  recognized  in  the  ofl&cer  on  duty  at 

leading  to  the  Marriage  and  Cotiversion  to  the  Catholic  Faith  of 
Mr.  and  Mrs.  Marlow  Sidney,  of  Cowper  Hall,  Northumberland, 
Iiondon,  1877,  12mo. 


APPENDIX  11.  313 

the  main  guard  on  the  great  square  of  the  city,  the  unlucky 
captain  who  had  checkmated  him  at  the  avenue.  The  square 
was  then  swarming  with  lomiging  officers  of  all  ranks.  Van- 
damme  took  no  apparent  notice  of  his  adversary,  but  having 
fully  recognized  him,  went  away  without  addressing  him  a 
word.  Soon,  however,  profiting  by  the  vicinity  of  a  small 
crooked  street,  such  as  are  almost  all  streets  in  Ratisbon,  he 
suddenly  reappeared  before  the  post.  The  sentry  immedi- 
ately called  out  the  guard,  according  to  regulations  when 
the  commanding  general  presents  himself.  The  captain 
instantly  rushed  out  with  the  guard,  but  so  sudden  and  un- 
expected had  been  the  second  visit  of  the  general  that  a  few 
minutes  elapsed  before  the  ranks  were  formed  and  arms 
presented.  Meanwhile  the  general,  standing  motionless,  had 
waited  for  this  moment ;  then,  giving  vent  to  his  brutal  dis- 
position, he  assailed  the  unfortunate  captain  in  the  most 
opprobrious  terms,  telling  him  that  he  was  fitter  to  drive  a 
herd  of  hogs  than  to  command  soldiers,  etc.  By  this  time 
a  crowd  of  officers  had  collected  round  the  spot.  The  cap- 
tain, during  this  painful  scene,  had  sufficient  control  over 
himself  to  refrain  from  answering  a  smgle  word.  But,  as 
soon  as  his  post  was  relieved,  he  called  on  Marshal  Oudinot, 
the  commander  of  the  staff,  and,  after  relating  the  facts  of 
the  affair,  demanded  permission  to  challenge  General  Van- 
damme.  The  marshal,  in  rather  severe  tones,  refused  the 
request.  On  this,  the  captain  (his  name  was,  I  believe, 
Jollivet,  14th  light  infantry)  did  not  hesitate  a  moment,  but 
aware,  as  was  all  the  army,  how  easy  of  access  the  Emperor 
was,  he  at  once  determined  on  having  direct  recourse  to  his 
majesty.  He  accordingly  repaired  to  the  pavilion  occupied 
by  Napoleon,  demanded  and  obtained  an  immediate  audi- 
ence, related  in  the  fullest  details  both  his  interviews  with 
General  Vandamme,  and  concluded  with  a  request  for  the 
same  favor  which  he  had  vainly  sohcited  from  Oudinot. 
Napoleon,  with  his  usual  affability  toward  his  inferiors,  an- 
swered :  '  Sir,  I  sympathize  with  your  feelings  on  this  occa- 
sion ;  but  you  must  feel  that  your  demand  is  inadmissible. 


314  APPENDIX  II. 

The  general  officers  of  the  army  are  to  be  here  to-morrow 
at  twelve  o'clock ;  come  at  the  same  hour.  Meanwhile,  I 
shall  have  strict  inquiry  made ;  and  if,  as  I  do  not  doubt, 
your  version  of  the  affair  is  quite  correct,  I  shall  require  a 
suitable  apology  from  General  Vandamme  to  you.' 

"  Punctual  to  the  hour,  the  captain  attended  the  meeting ; 
and  modestly,  from  the  inferiority  of  his  rank,  remained  be* 
hind  the  circle  formed  round  the  Emperor.  The  conversa- 
tion, as  on  such  ceremonious  occasions,  was  confined  to  triv- 
ial subjects,  and  the  company  seemed  preparing  to  take 
their  leave,  when  our  bold  captain,  elbowing  his  way  through 
marshals  and  generals,  stepped  into  the  centre  of  the  circle, 
and  fearlessly  addressing  the  Emperor,  said :  *  Sire,  you 
vouchsafed  to  promise  me  you  would  demand  fi'om  General 
Vandamme,  here  present,  some  apology  for  the  undeserved 
insults  which  he  offered  me.  I  come  here  in  consequence 
of  this  promise.' 

"Napoleon,  vdthout  answering  the  captain,  turned  to 
Vandamme,  saying :  '  General,  I  have  inquired  into  the 
facts  of  this  disagreeable  affair,  and  I  find  that  you  have 
most  unwarrantably  and  outrageously  insulted  an  officer  who 
enjoys  in  his  corps  the  highest  character.  You  owe  him  a 
suitable  apology,  as  pubhc  as  your  insult  has  been,  and  I 
insist  on  your  making  it  here.'  '  Sire,'  answered  Vandamme, 
'I  must  regi'et  having  been  carried  away  by  passion  in 
my  addressing  Captain  Jolhvet ;  but  these  gentlemen '  — 
'  That 's  enough,'  exclaimed  the  captain.  '  I  am  satisfied. 
Sire,  I  owe  you  more  than  my  life.  I  thank  your  majesty.' 
He  could  say  no  more ;  emotion  had  stifled  his  voice  ;  he 
bowed  and  retired.  I  have  not  heard  what  his  subsequent 
career  may  have  been. 

"It  frequently  happened  that  sudden  acclamations  of 
'  Vive  I'Empereur !  '  stirred  the  humors  of  our  bivouac  fires. 
This  often  occurred  from  the  enthusiasm  of  the  soldiers  at 
the  recital  of  some  trait  in  the  life  of  their  idolized  chief. 
The  first  outpouring  of  such  a  feeling  witnessed  by  me  was 
occasioned  by  the  animated  account  of  the  foregoing  incident 


APPENDIX  II.  315 

by  a  sergeant  to  a  large  concourse  of  soldiers.  The  strict 
sense  of  justice ;  the  generosity  of  Napoleon  toward  those 
who  had  served  weU,  or  toward  the  famihes  of  those  who 
had  fallen ;  his  paternal  attention  to  those  in  hospitals ;  his 
severe  sui'veillance  over  the  conduct  of  contractors  for  the 
supply  of  the  troops ;  the  commanding  influence  which  he 
unaffectedly  exerted  over  his  most  distinguished  generals  — 
all  these  aroused  the  enthusiasm  of  our  soldiers  at  the  mere 
recital  of  some  agreeable  trait  in  the  acts  of  their  idol." 

Nor  can  I  omit  the  hearty  and  enthusiastic  tribute 
from  his  German  soldiers  to  Napoleon  to  be  found  in 
Niklas  Miiller's  "  Liederbuch  f iir  die  Veteranen  der 
grossen  Napoleonarmee  von  1803  bis  1814."  I  quote 
from  Rambaud's  "  L'AUemagne  sous  Napoleon  ler," 
Paris,  1874,  pp.  182,  183. 

"  '  Le  guerrier  qui  a  suivi  Napoleon  sous  tous  les  climats 
de  I'univers,'  s'ecrie  I'auteur  dans  sa  preface,  '  le  guerrier 
qui  a  combattu  sous  ses  ordres  en  tant  de  royatimes,  qui  tant 
de  fois  a  pris  sa  part  de  la  glou-e  et  du  triomphe,  qui  a 
mene  cette  vie  tourmentee,  pleine  de  privations,  de  souf- 
frances,  de  fatigues  et  de  dangers  mortels,  ne  pent  pas,  ne 
doit  pas  oublier  son  grand  general.  Transfigure,  il  continue 
a  illuminer  nos  heures  de  joie ;  nous  lui  dedions,  ainsi  qu'a 
nos  victoires  immortelles,  de  bienfaisantes  fetes  commemo- 
ratives.  Le  veteran  s'y  rajeunit ;  il  recherche  ses  com- 
pagnons  d'armes,  ses  fideles  camarades,  pour  jouir  dans  leur 
Bociete  de  ces  douces  joies  qui  surgissent  du  sein  du  passe, 
comme  la  pierre  precieuse  des  mines  de  diamants.  —  Quel 
souverain  pourrait  prendre  ombrage  de  voir  une  telle  asso- 
ciation feter  les  anciennes  victoires,  jeter  un  regard  enui  sur 
les  aigles  brisees  de  Leipzig  et  de  Waterloo,  laisser  tomber 
une  larme  de  doideur  dans  les  flots  de  la  Beresina  ?  " 

"  Napoleon,  sur  le  theatre  du  monde,  a  ^te  I'image  clas- 
sique  du  heros ;  mais  il  etait  aussi  le  pere  des  soldats,  le  fort 
bouclier  de  I'honneur.  —  Le  camp,  la  misere,  le  danger,  la 
fatigue,  il  partageait  tout  en  camarade  ;  il  partageait  la  faim 


316  APPENDIX  11. 

ou  la  mauvaise  soupe  et  gucrissait  nos  esprits  malades.  — 
Quel  Charlemagne,  quel  Otton,  quel  Alexandre,  a  fait  au- 
tant  que  lui  ?  Tout  le  monde  les  nonime  grands  ;  mais  lui 
est  encore  audessus  d'eux.  —  Sous  ses  etendards  victorieux 
nous  avons  servi  fideles,  intrepides.  Son  nom  ne  peut  nous 
rappeler  que  des  sentiments,  que  des  souvenirs,  sans  cesse 
nouveaux  d'heroisme." 

I  cannot  close  this  appendix  without  quoting  for  my 
readers  the  touching  poems  of  Heine  and  Von  Zedlitz. 
Heine's  "  Two  Grenadiers  "  is  particularly  aproj)OS  of 
the  subject  we  have  been  considering.  I  give  it  in 
the  translation  of  the  Rev.  Dr.  Furness  of  Philadel- 
phia. 


THE  TWO  GRENADIERS. 

To  France  were  travelling  two  grenadiers 

From  prison  in  Russia  returning  ; 
And  when  they  came  to  the  German  frontiers, 

They  hung  down  their  heads  in  mourning. 

There  came  the  heart-breaking  news  to  their  ears 
That  France  was  by  fortune  forsaken ; 

Scattered  and  slain  were  her  brave  grenadiers, 
And  Napoleon,  Napoleon,  was  taken. 

Then  wept  together  those  two  grenadiers 
O'er  their  country's  departed  glory  ; 
"  Woe  's  me !  "  said  one,  in  the  midst  of  his  tears, 
"  My  old  wound,  how  it  burns  at  the  story ! " 

The  other  said,  "  The  end  has  come ; 

What  avails  any  longer  Uving  ? 
Yet  have  I  a  wife  and  a  child  at  home, 

For  an  absent  father  grieving. 


APPENDIX  II.  317 

"  Who  cares  for  wife  ?     "Who  cares  for  child  ? 

Dearer  thoughts  in  my  bosom  awaken ; 
Go  beg,  wife  and  cliild,  when  with  hunger  wild, 

For  Napoleon,  Napoleon,  is  taken. 

"  Oh  grant  me,  brother,  my  only  prayer, 
When  in  death  my  eyes  are  closing,  — 
Take  me  to  France  and  bury  me  there, 
In  France  be  my  ashes  reposing. 

"  This  cross  of  the  Legion  of  Honor  bright 
Let  lie,  near  my  heart,  upon  me ; 
Give  me  my  musket  in  my  hand, 
And  buckle  my  sabre  on  me. 

"  So  wiU  I  lie,  and  arise  no  more, 
My  watch  like  a  sentinel  keeping. 
Till  I  hear  the  cannon's  thundering  roar, 
And  the  squadrons  above  me  sweeping. 

*'  Then  the  Emperor  comes  !      And  his  banners  wave 
With  their  eagles  o'er  him  bending ; 
And  I  will  come  forth,  aU  in  arms,  from  my  grave, 
Napoleon,  Napoleon,  attending." 


THE   MIDNIGHT    REVIEW. 

FROM   THE   GERJVLAJSr    OF    VON    ZEDLITZ. 

At  midnight  from  his  grave 
The  drummer  woke  and  rose, 

And,  beating  loud  the  drum, 
Forth  on  his  errand  goes. 


318  APPENDIX  II. 

Stirred  by  his  fleshless  arms, 
The  drumsticks  rise  and  fall; 

He  beats  the  loud  retreat, 
Reveille  and  roU-caU. 

So  strangely  rolls  that  drum, 
So  deep  it  echoes  round. 

Old  soldiers  in  their  graves 
To  life  start  at  the  sound ; 

Both  they  in  farthest  North, 
Stiff  in  the  ice  that  lay. 

And  they  who  warm  repose 
Beneath  Italian  clay ; 

Below  the  mud  of  Nile, 
And  'neath  Arabian  sand, 

Their  burial  place  they  quit, 
And  soon  to  arms  they  stand. 

And  at  midnight  from  his  grave, 

The  trumpeter  arose, 
And,  mounted  on  his  horse, 

A  loud,  shrill  blast  he  blows. 

On  airy  coursers  then 

The  cavalry  are  seen. 
Old  squadrons,  erst  renowned. 

Gory  and  gashed,  I  ween. 

Beneath  the  casque,  their  skulld 
Smile  grim,  and  proud  their  air. 

As  in  their  bony  hands 

Their  long  sharp  swords  they  bare. 

And  at  midnight  from  his  tomb 
The  chief  awoke  and  rose ; 


APPENDIX  11.  319 

And,  followed  by  his  staff, 
With  slow  steps  on  he  goes. 

A  little  hat  he  wears, 

A  coat  quite  plain  has  he, 
A  little  sword  for  arms 

At  his  left  side  hangs  free. 

O'er  the  vast  plain  the  moon 

A  paly  lustre  threw ; 
The  man  with  the  little  hat 

The  troops  goes  to  review. 

The  ranks  present  their  arms, 

Deep  rolls  the  drum  the  while ; 
Recovering  then,  the  troops 

Before  the  chief  defile. 

Captains  and  generals  round 

In  circles  formed  appear ; 
The  chief  to  the  first  a  word 

Now  whispered  in  his  ear. 

The  word  goes  round  the  ranks, 

Resounds  along  the  line ; 
That  word  they  give  is,  —  France ! 

The  answer,  —  Saint  Hdlene ! 

'T  is  there,  at  midnight  hour, 

The  grand  review  they  say 
Is  by  dead  Caesar  held, 

In  the  Champs  Elysces ! 


320  APPENDIX  111. 

APPENDIX  III. 

LECTURE  III. 

ON  MR.  HERBERT  SPENCEr's  USE  OF  THE  "  GREAT 
MAN  THEORY  OP  HISTORY"  IN  REFERENCE  TO 
NAPOLEON. 

That  the  statement  in  the  text  is  not  an  exagger- 
ated representation,  as  some  might  suppose,  of  the 
views  of  the  influential  classes  in  England,  may  be 
seen  from  a  passage  in  a  work  of  Mr.  Herbert  Spen- 
cer's, entitled  "  The  Study  of  Sociology."  (London : 
Henry  S.  King  &  Co.,  1874,  pp.  156  et  seq.}  In 
his  chapter  on  "  Subjective  Difficulties-Emotional," 
we  find  all  the  accusations  against  Napoleon  enumer- 
ated, accepted  without  an  instant's  hesitation,  and 
dressed  out  in  the  most  lurid  colors.  We  are  told 
(p.  157)  that  "it  was  natural,  too,  that,  in  addition 
to  countless  treacheries  and  breaches  of  faith  in  his 
dealings  with  foreign  powers,  such  a  man  should  play 
the  traitor  to  his  own  nation  by  stamping  out  its  newly 
gained  free  institutions  and  substituting  his  own  mili- 
tary despotism.  .  .  .  Year  after  year  he  went  on  sacri- 
ficing by  tens  of  thousands  and  hundreds  of  thousands 
the  French  people  and  the  people  of  Europe  at  large, 
to  gratify  his  lust  of  power  and  his  hatred  of  oppo- 
nents. To  feed  his  insatiable  ambition  and  to  crush 
those  who  resisted  his  efforts  after  universal  dominion, 
he  went  on  seizing  the  young  men  of  France,  forming 
army  after  army,  that  were  destroyed  in  destroying 
like  armies  raised  by  neighboring  nations.  .  .  .  And 
all  this  slaughter,  all  this  suffering,  all  this  devasta- 
tion, was  gone  through  because  one  man  had  a  rest- 
less desire  to  be  despot  over  all  men." 


APPENDIX  IV.  321 

It  would  be  difficult  to  find  a  more  striking  exam- 
ple of  the  "  great  man  theory  of  History,"  as  Mr. 
Spencer  himself  in  the  second  chapter  of  this  very 
book  calls  it,  than  in  this  truly  extraordinary  passage. 
All  the  social,  political  and  legal  conditions  which 
made  the  era  of  Napoleon  an  era  of  conflict,  which 
made  such  a  military  career  as  his  possible,  are  here 
utterly  ignored.  All  the  European  powers  are  quietly 
assumed  to  be  the  inoffensive  and  peaceful  victims  of 
one  brutal  and  ambitious  soldier.  As  Mr.  Spencer 
says  in  his  second  chapter  (p.  33),  in  speaking  of  this 
"  great  man  theory  of  History,"  "  the  interpretation  of 
things  thus  given  is  so  beautifidly  simple,  seems  so 
easy  to  comprehend.  Providing  you  are  content  with 
conceptions  that  are  out  of  focus,  as  most  people's 
conceptions  are,  the  solutions  it  yields  appear  quite 
satisfactory."  No  one  could  make  a  better  criticism 
than  this  on  Mr.  Spencer's  simple  and  forcible  presen- 
tation of  the  domestic  and  foreign  policy  of  Napoleon, 
which  I  have  quoted  above,  and  I  am  quite  content  to 
leave  the  matter  here,  without  adding  a  word  of  my 
own. 


APPENDIX   IV. 

LECTURE  IV. 

THE   POLISH   QUESTION   AND  THE   RUSSIAN   WAR. 

The  Czar  of  Russia  felt  himself  to  be  the  representa- 
tive on  the  Continent  of  the  old  order  of  things.  He 
had  in  this  capacity  unhesitatingly  joined  the  coalitions. 
He  had,  to  be  sure,  at  last  made  peace  with  France  at 

21 


322  APPENDIX  IV. 

Tilsit,  and  had,  in  fact,  entered  into  alliance  with  her. 
But  the  French  alliance  was  detested  by  the  Russian 
nobility,  and  Alexander  himself  had  no  heart  in  it.  He 
had  made  it  because  he  saw  that  nothing  more  could  be 
attempted  at  that  time  against  Napoleon,  —  the  three 
ll^astern  powers  being  too  much  exhausted.  Besides,  he 
wanted  to  purchase  Napoleon's  permission  to  embark 
on  a  career  of  conquest.  And  he  obtained  it.  Since 
the  treaty  he  had  attacked  the  Turks  and  had  annexed 
Moldavia  and  Wallachia :  he  had  attacked  the  Swedes 
and  had  annexed  Finland.  He  now  coveted  Warsaw, 
and  the  surrounding  territory,  formerly  Prussian  Po- 
land, but  now  organized  as  the  Grand  Duchy  of  War- 
saw. It  had  greatly  annoyed  him  to  see  the  Duchy 
enlarged  by  the  greater  part  of  Austrian  Galicia,  as  a 
residt  of  the  Austrian  war  of  1809.  He  knew  that 
Czartoriski  and  other  Polish  patriots  were  looking  for- 
ward to  the  entire  reestablishment  of  Poland  with  the 
help  of  France.  This  he  cordially  dreaded.  The  ef- 
fect of  it  would  be  to  push  the  boundary  of  Russia 
back  to  the  Dneiper,  and  to  destroy  the  greater  part 
of  her  influence  in  European  affairs.  At  the  same 
time,  there  was  no  special  reason  to  suppose  that  a 
restoration  of  Poland  was  one  of  Napoleon's  schemes. 
Napoleon,  when  questioned  on  the  subject,  always  de- 
nied that  he  had  any  plan  of  the  kind. 

Thus,  in  front  of  Alexander  stood  the  Grand  Duchy 
of  Warsaw,  composed  of  the  Prussian  and  Austrian 
shares  in  the  partitions,  which  might,  perhaps,  if  af- 
fairs were  skilfully  managed,  be  annexed  to  Russia; 
or,  on  the  other  hand,  if  things  went  wrong,  might 
form  the  nucleus  to  which  might  be  added  the  much 
larger  territory  of  Russian  Poland.  The  Polish  ques- 
tion occupied  the  chief  place  in  Alexander's  thoughts 
from  the  beginning  of  1810  to  the  breaking  out  of  the 


APPENDIX  IV.  323 

war  with  France.  Various  solutions  occurred  to  him. 
Early  in  1810  ^  he  consulted  Prince  Czartoriski  on  the 
possibility  of  organizing  Russian  Poland  as  a  separate 
state,  of  which  the  Czar  of  Russia  should  be  the  heado 
But  the  Prince  said  that  a  half  measure  of  this  sort 
would  utterly  fail  to  satisfy  the  national  feeling. 

In  December,  1810,^  Alexander  suggested  to  Czar,, 
toriski  the  union  of  the  Grand  Duchy  of  Warsaw  and 
the  Russian  provinces  of  Poland  into  a  kingdom,  hav- 
ing a  regular  government  of  its  own,  but  of  which 
the  Czar  should  be  the  king.  This,  of  course,  meant 
war  with  Napoleon,  for  the  Grand  Duchy  was  a  mem- 
ber of  the  Confederation  of  the  Rhine.  The  scheme 
was,  in  effect,  to  annex  forcibly  the  Grand  Duchy  to 
Russia,  giving  the  Poles,  however,  what  we  now  call 
home-rule.  In  his  letter  to  the  Count,  Alexander 
desires  him  to  ascertain  the  state  of  feeling  in  War- 
saw and  throughout  the  Duchy  by  personal  observa- 
tion. Appended  to  this  letter  is  an  estimate  of  the 
forces  which  the  contending  powers  could  bring  into 
the  field. 

Czartoriski^  made  his  investigations,  and  reported 
to  the  Czar  that  the  Poles  would  not  think  of  such  a 
proposition  ;  that  they  expected  sooner  or  later  to  ob- 
tain their  restoration  at  the  hands  of  Napoleon. 

To  this  Alexander  replied  ^  in  January,  1811,  reiter- 
ating the  feasibility  of  the  scheme ;  stating  that  he  in- 
tended to  offer  Austria  the  Danubian  principalities  in 
exchange  for  Galicia,  and  should  offer  some  compen- 
sation to  the  King  of  Saxony,  who  was  the  Grand 
Duke  of  Warsaw,  if  he  took  his  side  in  the  war.  He 
also  goes  over  his  estimate  of  his  available  forces. 

^  Life  and  Times  of  Alexander  I.,  Joyneville,  vol.  ii.  pp.  96, 
97. 

2  Id.  pp.  108  et  seq.  «  Id.  p.  113.  ^  Id.  p.  114. 


324  APPENDIX  IV. 

The  most  important  tiling  in  this  letter  is  the  light 
it  throws  on  the  way  in  which  the  Czar  regarded 
his  relations  to  France.  To  attack  Napoleon  was  a 
mere  question  of  expediency.  Alexander  says :  "  It 
would  be  a  mistake  to  be  the  aggressor  in  present 
circumstances,  —  and  I  shall  not  make  that  mistake. 
But  everything  changes  if  the  Poles  join  me.  Re- 
inforced by  the  50,000  men  I  should  owe  to  them,  by 
the  50,000  Prussians  who  might,  without  risk,  also 
join  me,  and  by  the  moral  revolution  which  would  be 
the  unfailing  residt  in  Eui-ojie,  I  might  advance  to  the 
Oder  without  striking  a  blow."  Further  on  he  says  : 
"  Till  I  can  he  sure  of  the  coopei^ation  of  the  Poles 
I  have  deckled  not  to  begin  the  war  roith  France^''  ^ 

Among  the  results  of  the  war  would  be,  he  says, 
"  a  complete  revolution  in  the  opinion  of  Europe " 
and  "  deliverance  from  the  yoke  under  which  the  Con- 
tinent languishes." 

Now  observe.  The  Czar  does  not  pretend  to  have 
a  casus  helli  of  any  kind.  The  Grand  Duchy  of 
Warsaw,  which  he  proposes  to  annex,  never  belonged 
to  Russia.  But  if  he  can  settle  the  Polish  question  by 
uniting  all  the  scattered  portions  of  the  ancient  mon- 
archy under  the  rule  of  Russia,  and  can  thereby  also 
assail  the  Empire  of  Napoleon  with  a  fair  chance  of 
success,  and  bring  about  the  triumph  of  the  legitimist 
side  in  this  weary  contest,  —  which  is  what  he  means 
by  delivering  the  Continent  from  the  yoke  under 
which  it  languishes,  —  he  will  not  hesitate  to  com« 
mence  a  war  of  aggression. 

1  The  italics  are  mine.     Id.  p.  117. 


APPENDIX   V.  325 

APPENDIX  V. 

LECTURE  IV. 

ON  makmont's  criticism  on  napoleon's  tactics 

IN  HIS   LATER   CAMPAIGNS. 

Marshal  Marmont,  in  his  valuable  work  entitled 
"The  Spirit  of  Military  Institutions,"  after  speaking 
of  the  earlier  successes  of  Napoleon,  says :  "  In  1812, 
it  depended  upon  his  own  will  to  give  to  the  great  bat- 
tle which  he  fought  upon  the  Moskwa  the  character 
of  his  preceding  victories.  A  simple  flank  movement 
would  have  permitted  him  to  fight  the  Russian  army 
with  much  greater  advantages.  But  a  decided  taste 
for  direct  attacks  already  began  to  manifest  itself  in 
him,  a  taste  for  the  pleasure  of  emplojdng  force,  and 
a  kind  of  disdain  for  the  concurrence  of  art  and  skil- 
ful combinations."  (Am.  Ed.,  Part  III.,  chapter 
vii.,  page  186.) 

I  doubt  this  statement.  In  the  first  place  Napoleon 
did  organize  a  movement,  under  Davout  and  Ponia- 
towski,  having  for  its  object  to  turn  the  Russian  left. 
It  is  true  the  movement  was  only  measurably  success- 
ful, but  that  was  not  the  fault  of  the  plan.  Very  pos- 
sibly the  Russian  army  might  by  some  other  move- 
ment have  been  compelled  to  evacuate  their  position 
at  Borodino.  But  it  was  the  policy  of  the  French  at 
that  stage  of  the  campaign  to  fight  a  great  battle,  not 
to  compel  a  further  retreat  of  the  Russians  into  the 
interior.  As  regards  Napoleon's  alleged  taste  for  di- 
rect attacks,  the  employment  of  main  force,  and  so 
forth,  it  should  be  recollected  that  at  this  period  of 
his  career  his  adversaries  did  not  make  the  blunders, 
either  strategical  or  tactical,  which  were  so  common  in 


326  APPENDIX    VI. 

his  earlier  experience.  Battles  like  Wagram  and 
Borodino  are  not  to  be  classed  with  Austerlitz  and 
Friedland.  Besides,  there  was  never  any  falling  off 
in  Napoleon's  quickness  in  availing  himself  of  any 
mistake  of  his  enemy's :  witness,  for  instance,  Dresden 
and  Ligny. 


APPENDIX  VI. 
LECTURE  V. 


ON   THE  NUMBERS   ENGAGED   AND   ON  THE  LOSSES  IS 
THE   WAR    WITH    RUSSIA. 

Chambray,  in  his  "  Campagne  de  Russie,"  in  a 
table  annexed  to  the  second  volume,  gives  the  follow- 
ing figures,  which  are  taken,  Chambray  says,  from  the 
returns  sent  to  the  war  department  of  the  strength  of 
each  corps  at  the  moment  of  its  passage  into  the  terri- 
tory of  Russia. 

Field  and  Staff 3,983 

First  Corps,  Davout 72,051 

Second  Corps,  Oudinot        .....  37,139 

Third  Corps,  Ney 39,342 

Fourth  Corps,  Eugene 44,798 

Fifth  Corps,  Poniatowski        ....  36,311 

Sixth  Corps,  St.  Cyr 25,134 

Seventh  Corps,  Reynier           ....  17,189 

Eighth  Corps  Junot,  afterwards  Vandamme         .  17,935 

Ninth  Corps,  Victor,  entered  Russia  in  September  33,567 

Tenth  Corps,  Macdonald         ....  32,497 

Schwartzenberg 34,148 

Guard 47,373 

Forward 441,467 


APPENDIX   VI.  327 


Brought  over 

. 

441,467 

Cavalry :  — 

Nansouty 

.      12,077 

Montbrun 

.  10,436 

Grouchy 

9,676 

Latour  Maubourg 

7,994 

40,183 

Durutte's  Division  entered  Russia  in  Novem- 
ber          13,592 

Loison's  Division  entered  Russia  in  Novem- 
ber      13,290 


Total  as  from  ofl&cial  returns        .         .         .  508,532 
Chambray  adds  to  this  total  an  estimate  of  troops 
who,   during  the   campaign,    rejoined   their 
regiments       ......  80,000 

And  for  men  connected  with  the  grand 
parks  of  artillery,  engineer  corps,  etc.,  an 
estimate  of  ......     21,526 

610,058  2 


I  think  that  a  deduction  of  probably  ten  per  cent. 

should  be  made  from  the  official  total  of  508,532 
Say 50,853 

Thus  reducing  the  official  total  to        .         .         •  457,679 

1  From  tliis  total  of  .         .         .     481,650 
Deduct  the  Field  and  Staff       .  3,983    477,667 

Deduct  also  an  estimate  of  10  per  cent,  for 

excess  of  estimate           ....     47,766 
Leaving T"     429,901 

Which  is  slightly  below  the  Due  de  Fezensac's  total  of        447,000 
De  Fezensac  adds  for  recruits  and  fresh  troops         .  53,000 

Making  a  total  of 500,000 

See  Fezensac's  Journal  de  la  Campagne  de  Russie,  p.  4,  note  ; 
p.  191. 

2  To  this  Chambray  adds  37,100  for  those  absent  from  the 
ranks,  —  an  estimate  to  get  at  wliat  the  French  call  Veffectif, 
which  is  the  total,  present  and  absent.  His  total,  therefore, 
reaches  the  enormous  figure  of  ....     647,158 


328  APPENDIX   VI. 

Brought  over  .....  457,679 
And  as  for  the  estimates,  I  should  think  the  first 

altogether  too  large,  probably  by  one  half ; 

let  us  then  add  for  recruits  40.000 

And  for  extra-dut\-  men.  as  above       .         .         .     21.526 


Making  a  total  of 519.205 

In  Bourtourlin's  Atlas,  Tableau  No.  1.  he  puts  the 
total  allied  force  at  the  opening  of  the  campaign  at 
525,800  men.  but  this  includes  the  whole  corps  of  Au- 
gereau,  of  CO.OOO  men,  most  of  which  did  not  enter 
Russia.  In  Tableau  No.  20  he  puts  the  actual  num- 
ber that  entered  Russia  during  the  whole  campaign  at 
554.000  men. 

The  Russian  estimate  of  the  fate  of  the  armies  of 
the  French  and  their  allies  does  not  differ  materially 
from  this  figure.  In  Bourtourlin's  History,  voL  ii., 
pp.  445,  446,  it  is  thus  given :  — 

Killed  in  battle  or  died  of  wounds          .         .         .  125. (KH) 

Died  of  disease,  cold,  exhaustion,  etc         .         .  132.(K!>0 

Taken  prisoners 193,000 

Returned 80.000 

Total 530.CKX) 

General  Gourgaud  in  his  Examen  Critique  of  the 
work  of  the  Count  de  S^gur.  Book  XII..  chapter  iv., 
gives  a  higher  estimate  of  those  who  returned,  viz :  — 

Troops  which  repassed  the  Xiemen  to  Kowno  on 

the  15th  of  December        ....  36.000 

Tenth  Corps.  Macdonald  ....  30.000 

Fifth  Corps,  Poniatowski  ....  20.000 

Seventh  Corps.  Reynier  ....  15.<XH) 

Sehwartzenberg's 26.000 

Total 127.000 

I  think  his  estimate  of  the  strength  of  the  Fifth 
Corps  is  very  wide  of  the  mark.     It  should  be  ol> 


APPENDIX    VII.  829 

served  that  the  troops  of  Macdonald,  Reynier  and 
Schwartzenberg  had  not  penetrated  far  into  the  coun- 
try- 

Charras,  in  his  "  Guerre  de  1813,"  chapter  i.,  gives 

the  numbers  as  follows :  — 

P.  5.  Repassed  the  Niemen  —  35,000  or  40,000  men, 
of  whom  about  26,000  or  27,000  were  in  good  condi- 
tion. 

P.  9-13  —  Macdonald  —  22,000  to  25,000  men, 
Schwartzenberg,  Reynier,  etc.,  45,000  to  50,000  men. 

Taking  the  smaller  figures,  we  have :  — 

Grand  army,  main  column         ....         35,000 

Macdonald 22,000 

Schwartzenberg        .         .         .         .         .         .         45,000 

Total 102,000 


APPENDIX  VII. 

LECTUEE  VII. 

ON  THE   BERTRAND   ORDER. 

I  HAVE  related  the  history  of  this  Bertrand  order 
in  an  article  published  in  the  "  Atlantic  Monthly  "  in 
June,  1881,  entitled  "Who  Lost  Waterloo?"  It  is 
certainly  a  very  curious  story. 

As  to  the  effect  to  be  given  to  this  despatch  in  any 
critical  estimate  of  the  campaign,  it  seems  to  me  that 
it  cannot  well  be  exaggerated.  In  it,  the  Emperor  in 
effect  says  to  Grouchy  that,  even  although  it  looks 
now  as  if  the  Prussians  had  fallen  back  in  the  direc- 
tion of  Namur,  still  it  may  be  that  they  have  not 
really  done  so  at  all,  but  that  they  are  intending  to 
unite  with  the  English  and  fight  a  battle  for  the  de- 


330  APPENDIX   VII . 

fence  of  Brussels.  Yet,  in  face  of  this,  Chesney^  says 
that  this  letter  "  serves  to  show  two  things  only^ 
(1),  that  Napoleon  was  now  uncertain  of  the  line  of 
Bliicher's  retreat,  and  (2)  that  he  judged  Gembloux 
a  good  point  to  move  Grouchy  on,  in  any  case." 

Nor  is  Chesney  the  only  English  critic  who  seems 
to  me  to  underestimate  the  importance  of  the  warning 
contained  in  this  despatch.  Kennedy,  Hooper,  Ham- 
ley  seem  to  me  to  be  open  to  this  criticism.  Hamley, 
in  fact,  in  his  elaborate  critique  on  the  campaign  in 
his  "  Operations  of  War,"  does  not  even  allude  to  the 
order. 

In  the  first  place,  they  all  of  them  consider  the  de- 
spatch chiefly  in  reference  to  Napoleon's  conduct  of 
the  campaign.  Very  likely  they  are  right  in  holding 
that  Napoleon's  omissions  and  delays  that  morning  of 
the  17th  are  not  redeemed  even  by  the  sagacity  which 
warned  Grouchy  of  a  possible  union  of  the  Prussian 
army  with  the  English.  But  they  do  not  stop  here. 
They  are  so  much  impressed  by  the  delays  and  the 
omissions  that  they  entirely  fail  to  do  justice  to  the 
Emperor's  sagacity  in  predicting  the  operation  which 
actually  was  effected.  In  the  second  place,  it  is  quite 
evident  that  they  have  not  considered  the  Bertrand 
order  with  reference  to  Grouchy's  conduct,  which  is  a 
matter  with  which  our  praise  or  blame  of  Napoleon 
has,  of  course,  nothing  to  do.  Grouchy  at  Gembloux 
during  the  night  of  the  17th  and  18th,  in  fact  by  three 
A.  M.  of  the  18th,  had  ascertained  that  the  Prussians 
had  retreated  on  Wavre,  in  other  words  had  fallen 
back  upon  their  allies.     He  had  no  specific  instruc- 

^  Waterloo  Lectures.  A  Study  of  the  Campaign  of  1815.  By 
Colonel  Charles  C.  Chesuey,  R.  E.  Third  Edition.  London: 
Longmans.     1874.     P.  152. 

2  The  italics  are  mine. 


APPENDIX   VII.  331 

tions,  nothing  whatever  to  hamper  him  in  any  way. 
He  had  no  orders  to  go  to  Wavre,  or  anywhere  else. 
The  only  order  which  he  had,  warned  him  in  so  many 
words  that  the  Prussians  might  perhaps  be  intending 
to  unite  with  the  English  to  try  the  fate  of  another 
battle  for  the  defence  of  Brussels.  He  had  with  him 
two  fine  corps,  between  83,000  and  34,000  men.  That 
under  these  circumstances  he  should  have  marched 
towards  the  main  army  under  the  Emperor,  should 
have  drawn  near  to  it,  so  that  he  might  have  received 
his  orders  directly  from  the  Emperor,  1  submit  is  too 
plain  for  argument. 

To  judge  fairly  of  the  question,  whether  Marshal 
Grouchy's  movements  were  what  they  should  have  been 
or  not,  one  must  consider  it  by  itself,  and  not  allow 
one's  mind  to  be  confused  by  dwelling  on  any  previous 
shortcomings  of  Napoleon.  Stated  briefly,  then,  the 
case  is  this :  Early  on  the  morning  of  the  18th  of 
Jime,  Grouchy  at  Gembloux  knows  that  Napoleon  is 
on  the  Brussels  turnpike  expecting  to  fight  the  Duke, 
and  that  Bliicher  has  retired  on  Wavre  so  as  to  sup- 
port the  Duke.  The  danger  to  Napoleon  is  therefore 
evident,  and  pressing.  To  manoeuvre  in  his  direction, 
keeping  the  Prussians  always  on  his  right,  using  the 
large  force  of  cavalry  which  he  had  with  him  to  secure 
the  roads  and  bridges,  and,  above  all,  to  start  at  day- 
break and  to  lose  no  time,  was  clearly  the  dictate  of 
common  sense. 

Whether,  if  he  had  done  this,  he  would  have  inter- 
posed his  force  between  the  Emperor's  army  and  the 
Prussians,  may  perhaps  admit  of  some  difference  of 
opinion.  I  have  not  time  to  discuss  the  question  here. 
I  have  given  my  own  opinion  in  the  text.  Certain  it 
is,  that  to  stop  Grouchy  in  such  a  march  would  have 
necessitated  such  a  complete  change  in  the  Prussian 


332  APPENDIX    VII. 

programme  for  the  day  that  the  chance  of  Napoleon's 
beating  the  Duke  before  any  considerable  force  of  the 
Prussians  could  arrive,  would  have  been  very  greatly 
increased,  to  say  the  least  of  it.  Probably  all  will 
allow  that  the  catastrophe  would  have  been  avoided. 
I  am  not  now  speaking  of  the  effect  which  would  have 
been  produced  by  Grouchy's  marching  at  noon,  when 
he  heard  the  guns,  from  Sart  a  Walhain :  that  is  a 
very  different  question.  I  am  speaking  of  Grouchy's 
marching  at  daybreak  from  Gembloux. 

A  criticism  on  Napoleon  which  is  made  by  the  dis- 
tinguished English  general.  Sir  James  Shaw-Kennedy, 
which  is  adopted  by  Chesney  in  his  Lectures,  and  is 
there  said  to  have  been  first  suggested  by  Clausewitz, 
seems  to  require  a  brief  consideration.  I  quote  from 
General  Kennedy's  work :  — 

"  The  idea  that  Grouchy  was  entirely  wrong,  that  the 
fault  was  entirely  his,  that  his  bungling  or  treason  caused 
the  loss  of  the  action,  cannot  be  admitted  as  a  portion  of  au- 
thentic history  :  it  has  soothed  French  susceptibilities,  and 
has  been  employed  to  give  a  more  favorable  view  of  Napo- 
leon's combinations.  In  respect  to  the  latter  it  utterly  fails, 
which  may  be  shown  by  the  following  view,  which,  so  far  as 
I  know,  has  not  hitherto  been  brought  forward ;  but  which, 
when  stated,  must,  as  I  conceive,  be  a  self-evident  proposi- 
tion. The  allegation  is,  that,  when  at  noon  Grouchy  heard 
such  a  cannonade  as  to  indicate  that  a  general  action  was  in 
progress,  he  ought  to  have  marched  directly  to  tlie  field  of 
battle.  Now,  even  admitting  this  to  be  true,  it  implies  that 
Napoleon  committed  the  same  error  in  a  far  stronger  and 
more  inexcusable  degree.  If  Grouchy's  proper  place  was 
on  the  field  of  battle  at  Waterloo,  then  Napoleon  should 
have  sent  for  him  at  daylight  on  the  morning  of  the  18th. 
when  he  saw  the  Anglo-AUied  army  in  position,  and  deter- 
mined to  attack  it.  Napoleon  knew  with  positive  certainty 
that  a  general  action  was  taking  place  :  if,  then,  the  princi' 


APPENDIX  VII.  333 

pie  was  correct  that  Grouchy  should  take  part  in  it,  why  did 
not  Napoleon  order  him  to  march  upon  Planchenoit  ?  Nar 
poleon  had  positive  and  certain  knowledge  of  the  existence 
of  a  general  action,  and  was  free  to  give  to  Grouchy  what 
orders  he  chose  :  Grouchy,  on  the  contrary,  only  could  guess 
as  to  the  existence  of  a  general  action,  and,  in  acting  upon 
a  probable  supposition,  would  have  done  so  contrary  to  liis 
instructions.  Now  Napoleon  not  only  failed  to  send  any 
order  to  Grouchy  to  march  upon  Waterloo,  when  he  knew 
positively  that  he  was  about  to  engage  in  a  general  action 
with  the  Anglo-Allied  army,  but  even  when  the  action 
was  actually  commencing,  he  caused  Soult  to  write  to  him, 
approving  of  his  marching  upon  Wavre.  If  then  Grouchy 
violated  a  principle  in  not  marching  to  the  field  of  battle, 
Napoleon  violated  the  same  principle,  and  in  an  aggravated 
degree,  by  not  ordering  his  march  upon  Waterloo  early  on 
the  morning  of  the  18th,  and  in  going  the  length  of  approv- 
ing his  march  upon  Wavre  when  the  battle  of  Waterloo 
was  actually  commencing."  ^ 

The  answer  to  this  is  very  simple.  "  Early  on  the 
morning  of  the  18th  "  Napoleon  did  not  know  where 
the  Prussians  were,  but  supposed  that  Grouchy  was 
looking  out  for  them.  Why  then  should  he  send  for 
him?  Napoleon  did  not  need  Grouchy  to  help  him 
fight  the  Duke  :  he  knew  perfectly  well  what  sort  of  an 
army  the  Duke  had,  and  how  small  a  force  of  English 
troops  the  Duke  had  with  him.  The  Emperor  would 
beyond  a  reasonable  doubt  have  beaten  that  army  had 
he  been  able  to  employ  his  whole  force  against  it. 
Nor  did  the  Duke  himself  ever  disj)ute  this  view. 
Everybody  knows  that  Wellington  took  up  his  posi- 
tion relying  on  the  assurance  of  Blucher  that  he  should 
be   largely   reinforced.     If   Grouchy   ought   to   have 

1  Notes  on  the  Battle  of  Waterloo.  By  the  late  General  Sir 
Sir  James  Shaw-Kennedy,  K.  C.  B  London  :  John  Murray. 
18G5.     Pp.  159-lGl. 


334  APPENDIX    VI L 

marched  to  the  field  of  Waterloo,  as  indeed  he  ought, 
it  was  not  because  he  might  suppose  his  master  to  be 
in  peril  from  the  army  under  Wellington,  but  because 
he  would  fear  that  that  army  would  be  strengthened 
by  a  large  part  of  the  force  under  Bliicher.  Had 
Grouchy  been  where  he  should  have  been,  between 
Napoleon  and  the  Prussians,  he  would  never  have 
thought  of  marching  to  the  field  of  Waterloo ;  for  not 
only  would  his  presence  there  not  be  needed,  but  only 
by  remaining  where  he  was  would  he  be  fulfilling  his 
appointed  role  of  preventing  the  Prussians  from  taking 
a  hand  in  that  fray.  For  Napoleon,  then,  to  have  sent 
for  Grouchy  early  on  the  morning  of  the  18th  to  help 
him  fight  Wellington,  when,  for  anything  that  Napo- 
leon knew.  Grouchy  might  be  ably  and  skilfully  play- 
ing his  part  of  keeping  the  Prussians  off,  would  have 
been  unwise  indeed. 

As  for  Soult's  order,  "  approving  Grouchy's  march 
upon  Wavre,  when  the  battle  of  Waterloo  was  actually 
commencing,"  I  have  fully  explained  in  the  text  that 
it  was  wi'itten  when  it  was  evident  to  Napoleon  that 
the  Prussians  were  approaching,  and  that  it  was,  in 
effect,  an  order  to  Grouchy  to  join  the  main  army  at 
once. 

In  conclusion,  let  me  say  a  word  on  the  very  unfor- 
tunate effect  which  the  political  animus  of  Charras, 
Quinet,  and  other  writers  had  on  their  discussions  of 
the  subject.  These  men  were  not  historians  at  all, 
properly  so  called.  They  wrote  for  a  present  political 
purpose.  They  were  the  enemies  of  the  Second  French 
Empire,  and  they  were,  in  these  books  of  theirs,  try- 
ing to  break  down  the  prestige  of  the  First  Napoleon, 
which,  as  they  supposed,  had  much  to  do  with  the 
establishment  and  success  of  the  Second  Empire. 
They  were  endeavoring  to  destroy  "  la  legende  Napo- 


APPENDIX   VII.  335 

I^onienne."  It  is  true  that  we  owe  much  to  their  in- 
defatigable researches,  but  we  must  always  remember 
that  their  object  was  not  the  truth  of  history,  but  such 
a  version  of  this  campaign  as  could  be  made  to  tell 
against  the  Imperialist  side  in  the  political  controver- 
sies of  their  own  day  and  generation.  The  worst  of 
it  is,  that  their  captious,  suspicious,  and  unfair  spirit 
has  to  a  certain  extent  infected  certain  English  wri- 
ters. In  fact  Captain  Siborne,  whose  exhaustive  work 
on  the  campaign  was  written  in  1844,  in  the  days  of 
Louis  Philippe,  is  beyond  question  the  most  impartial 
and  reasonable  English  writer  on  the  subject. 

A  good  illustration  of  this  disposition  towards  fault- 
finding may  be  found  in  Chesney's  Waterloo  Lectures, 
(8d  ed.  pp.  118,  119,)  where  he  is  accusing  Napoleon 
of  negligence  in  his  management  of  the  left  wing  of 
the  army  :  — 

"  Did  he  direct  that  at  daylight  (of  the  16th)  d'Erlon 
should  close  up  his  long  column  on  ReUle's  rear  at  GosseUes, 
and  be  ready  for  the  marching  order  forward?  Were 
there  any  signs  of  pressure  or  hurry  in  Ney's  morning  in- 
structions, or  any  notion  then  of  a  great  pitched  battle 
which  that  marshal  was  by  a  flank  movement  to  win  for  his 
master  ?  We  are  enabled  to  answer  all  these  questions  in 
the  direct  negative  from  Napoleon's  own  authority.  The 
only  letter  from  the  latter  to  Ney,  written  before  the  five 
orders  already  mentioned  [the  orders  given  on  the  16th, 
beginning  with  the  one  which  assigned  him  to  the  command 
of  the  Fii'st  and  Second  Corps*],  was  merely  a  formal  one, 
assigning  Kellerman's  cavalry  to  the  marshal,  and  inquiring 
if  d'Erlon  had  completed  his  movement  of  the  day  before 
and  '  what  are  the  exact  positions  of  his  corps  and  Reille's.' 
Not  a  word  of  any  urgency,  or  of  preparing  to  advance  by 
closing  d'Erlon's  divisions  on  to  the  chatissee  at  Gosselies." 

Why  Colonel  Chesney  should  have  approached  the 


336  APPENDIX    VII. 

subject,  as  he  evidently  did,  with  the  notion  that  he 
would  find  Napoleon's  management  of  the  campaign 
characterized  by  the  carelessness  which  he  attributes 
to  him,  I  will  not  pause  to  inquire.  But  the  fact  is, 
that  the  movement  which  Chesney  charges  the  Em- 
peror with  having  omitted  to  order,  "  that  at  daylight 
[of  the  16th]  d'Erlon  should  close  up  his  long  column 
on  Reille's  rear  at  Gosselies,  and  be  ready  for  the 
marching  order  forward,"  was  actually  prescribed,  — 
only,  instead  of  its  being  an  order  to  close  up  and 
reach  Gosselies  at  daylight  of  the  16th,  the  order  was 
sent  at  three  p.  m.  of  the  loth,  and  was  to  be  executed 
at  once.  The  order  is  to  be  found  in  the  very  valu- 
able work  published  by  the  son  of  Marshal  Ney,  and 
entitled  "  Documents  inedits  sur  la  Campagne  de 
1815."    (Paris,  1840,  p.  25.)     It  reads  as  follows :  — 

"  A  M.  LE    COMTE    D'ErLOX. 

Extrait  du  registre  du  major  general. 

Ex    AVANT    DE    ChARLEROI, 

A  3  heures  du  soir,  15  J'uin,  1815. 
Monsieur  le  comte  d'Erlon,  I'Empereur  ordonne  a  M.  le 
comte  Reille  de  marcher  sur  Gosselies,  et  d'y  attaquer  un 
corps  ennemi  qui  paraissait  s'y  arreter.  L'intention  de 
I'empereur  est  que  vous  marchiez  aussi  sur  Gosselies.  pour 
appuyer  le  comte  Reille  et  le  seconder  dans  ses  operations." 

This  order  was  not  sent  to  Ney,  for  he  only  joined 
the  army  about  five  o'clock  in  the  afternoon  on  the 
15th,  but  it  was  sent  to  the  Count  d'Erlon,  and  it 
completely  relieves  Napoleon  of  the  charges  which 
Chesney  so  vehemently  urges.  Colonel  Chesney,  be- 
yond a  question,  intended  to  be  impartial  in  his  treat- 
ment of  the  conduct  of  all  the  actors  in  this  campaign, 
but  he  seems  somehow  to  have  been  infected  with  the 
then  prevailing  disposition  to  disparage  the  capacity 
of  Napoleon.    Napoleon,  having  sent  orders  to  d'Erlon, 


APPENDIX   VII.  337 

on  the  afternoon  of  the  15th,  to  close  up  on  Reille  at 
Gosselies,  and  to  support  him  in  his  attack  on  the 
enemy  there,  naturally  enough  inquires  of  Ney,^  the 
first  thing-  in  the  morning  of  the  16th,  if  the  First  Corps 
has  finished  its  movement,  and  what  was  the  exact 
position  of  the  two  corps.  There  is  no  carelessness 
here,  not  a  trace  of  it.  Why  Chesney  should  call  this 
letter  to  Ney  "merely  a  formal  one  "  is  not  very  clear, 
until  we  see  that  Chesney  did  not  know  what  the  or- 
ders of  the  afternoon  before  had  been. 

The  truth  is,  there  has  been  altogether  too  much 
temper  shown  by  most  of  the  historians  of  this  cam- 
paign. This  is  true  of  both  sides,  and  is  especially 
shown  in  dealing  with  the  conduct  of  Napoleon.  The 
best  English  writers  now  frankly  admit  Wellington's 
mistakes  in  not  concentrating  more  promptly  at  Quatre 
Bras,  and  in  leaving  such  a  large  force  at  Hal  during 
the  battle  of  Waterloo.  It  is  generally  conceded  that 
it  was  unwise  for  Bliicher  to  risk  a  battle  alone  and 
unsupported.  But  it  seems  to  be  well-nigh  impossible 
for  one  and  the  same  writer  to  admit  that  both  Napo- 
leon and  Grouchy  made  mistakes ;  to  point  out  how 
Napoleon's  carelessness  in  not  ascertaining  the  direc- 
tion of  the  Prussian  retreat  after  Ligny,  his  mistaken 
guess  as  to  its  direction,  and  his  delay  in  sending  out 
Grouchy,  gravely  imperilled  the  success  of  the  cam- 
paign ;  but  that  nevertheless  he  did  foresee  the  possi- 
bility of  the  union  of  the  allied  armies,  and  warned 
Grouchy  of  it ;  and  that,  had  this  warning  been  suf- 
ficiently heeded,  the  campaign  might  have  had  a  very 
diffei-ent  termination.  Let  us  hope,  that,  as  time  goes 
on,  this  impossibility  will  cease  to  exist,  and  that  the 
historical  spirit  will  fully  supplant  the  controversial. 

1  Documents  inidits,  pp.  26,  27. 
22 


338  APPENDIX  Vlll.y  IX. 

APPENDIX  VIII. 

LECTURE  Vn. 

ON  net's  employment  op  the  cavalry  of  the 

GUARD   AT   WATERLOO. 

How  Ney  was  permitted  thus  to  engage  troops  not 
under  his  orders  has  never  been  satisfactorily  ex- 
plained. But  it  was  one  of  the  natural  results  of  Na- 
poleon's mode  of  fighting  this  battle,  which  was  entirely 
different  from  his  usual  practice.  By  giving  to  Ney 
the  general  direction  of  the  battle  against  the  English 
army,  it  resulted  that  there  were,  so  to  speak,  two  gen- 
erals on  the  field,  Ney  and  himself.  That  Ney  on  a 
detached  operation  should  command  two  corps  might 
well  have  been  a  judicious  arrangement ;  but  that  such 
an  arrangement  shoidd  be  persisted  in  during  a  great 
battle  where  the  Emperor  was  present  in  person, 
strikes  one  at  first  as  uncalled  for  and  imwise.  It  is, 
however,  undoubtedly,  to  be  attributed  to  the  necessity 
under  which  the  Emperor  labored  of  conducting  also 
the  other  battle  against  the  Prussians  near  Planche- 
noit. 


APPENDIX  IX. 
LECTURE  VIL 


ON   DR.    EDWARD    A.    FREEMAN'S    CONTrNCrrNG   TO    USE 
THE   NAME    "  BUONAPARTE "    IN    HIS    HISTORIES. 

It  is  curious  and  not  a  little  amusing  to  see  the  per> 
sistency  with  which  some  English  writers  of  to-day 


APPENDIX  IX.  339 

retain  the  petty  prejudices  of  a  former  time.  Dr. 
Edward  A.  Freeman,  to  whose  historical  researches  in 
many  fields  the  world  is  much  indebted,  evidently  en- 
joys speaking  of  Napoleon  by  his  family  surname.  In 
fact,  he  will  not  even  allow  his  victim  to  decide  for 
himself  how  that  name  ought  to  be  spelled.  In  the 
"  General  Sketch  of  European  History  "  (London :  Mac- 
millan  &  Co.,  1874 ;  pp.  329  et  seq.'),  Buonaparte  (sic) 
is  spoken  of  as  "calling  himself"  Consul,  Emperor  of 
the  French,  and  King  of  Italy.  Whether  he  ever  was 
the  First  Consul  of  France ;  whether  it  is  or  is  not 
correct  to  speak  of  him  as  Emperor  of  the  French  and 
King  of  Italy,  are  questions  which  do  not  seem  in  the 
least  to  trouble  Dr.  Freeman.  To  him,  an  English- 
man, this  objectionable  foreigner,  having  started  in 
life  as  a  private  citizen  possessing  the  family  name  of 
Buonaparte,  Buonaparte  he  shall  remain,  so  Dr.  Free- 
man wills,  no  matter  what  may  have  been  the  world's 
recognition  of  the  titles  he  assumed,  or  the  posts  he 
filled.  I  had  at  one  time  thought  that  this  extraordi- 
nary refusal  to  give  to  the  ruler  of  France  the  rank 
which  was  accorded  to  him  by  all  the  states  of  Conti- 
nental Europe  might  be  accounted  for  by  the  fact 
that  the  English  government  never  recognized  Napo- 
leon the  First  as  Emperor  of  the  French.  But  this 
theory  I  find  is  untenable  ;  for  when  Dr.  Freeman 
comes  to  speak  of  the  Third  Napoleon,  whose  title  was 
not  only  recognized  by  England  as  by  the  other  pow- 
ers, but  who  was  the  ally  of  England  in  the  Crimean 
war,  was  received  at  Windsor  Castle  and  received  the 
Queen  at  the  Tuileries,  he  gives  him  no  more  decent 
treatment  than  he  gave  to  his  uncle.  It  is  Buonaparte 
(^sic)  who  becomes  a  prisoner  at  Sedan  (p.  351).  I 
recall  nothing  quite  so  good  as  this,  except  the  con- 
duct of  the  jacobins  in  calling  Louis  XVL  and  Marie 
A-ntoinette  Citoyen  and  Citoyenne  Capet. 


INDEX. 


Abensberg,  action  at,  142. 

Abercromby,  Sir  Ralph,  49. 

Alexander  I.,  of  Russia,  tries  to  Induce 
Prussia  to  join  the  coalition,  124  ;  loses 
hiG  army  at  Friedland,  129  ;  malses 
peace  with  Napoleon,  129  ;  aspires  to 
"  tlie  deUverauce  of  Europe,"  198  ;  in 
Pai-is,  220  ;  decides  that  the  powers  will 
not  treat  mth  Napoleon,  222  ;  an  un- 
fortunate decision,  222  ;  a  representa- 
tive of  the  old  order  of  tilings,  321 ; 
in  alliance  with  France,  322 ;  had  no 
heart  in  the  French  alliance,  322  ;  his 
conquests,  322  ;  attitude  on  the  Polish 
question,  322,  323 ;  to  attack  Napoleon 
a  question  of  expediency,  324  ;  decides 
not  to  begin  the  war,  324 ;  what  he 
hoped  to  do  in  1811,  324. 

Alison,  Sir  Archibald,  1. 

Alps,  passes  of,  52 ;  Napoleon  crosses, 
into  Italy,  53. 

Alvinzi,  general,  24. 

Amiens,  peace  of,  broken  by  England, 
108. 

Areola,  bridge  of,  24. 

Aspern,  battle  of,  143. 

Auerstadt,  battle  of,  127. 

Augereau,  marshal,  28. 

Austerlitz,  battle  of,  114-117 ;  Napoleon's 
greatest  battle,  115,  116  ;  character  of 
the  French  army,  115  ;  blunder  of  the 
aUies,  116  ;  a  decisive  success,  117. 

Austria,  in  1789,  3 ;  war  with  France, 
21-25;  Napoleon's  briUiaut  campaign 
i^aiust,  in  Italy,  23-25 ;  peace  pre- 
liminaries signed  at  Leoben,  25  ;  treaty 
of  Carapo  Fonuio,  25  ;  war  breaks  out 
again  (1799),  38  ;  aided  by  Russia,  38  ; 
Moreau's  able  campaign  against,  50, 
51  ;  the  campaign  in  Italy,  51-57  ; 
peace  concluded  at  Lune^Tlle,  G2  ;  re- 
sults of  the  war,  99  ;  joins  England 
and  Russia  against  France,  108 ;  in- 
vades Bavaria,  111  ;  rejects  peace 
offers,  112  ;  loses  the  Tyrol  and 
Venice,  117  ;  opens  the  campaign  of 
1809,  141  ;  defeated  at  Wagrani,  149 ; 
peace  concluded  at  Vienna,  149  ;  ally 
of  France  in  the  Russian  campaign, 
163  ;  demands  a  price  for  neutrality, 
211 ;  joins  the  coalition  against  Na- 


poleon,  214  ;    course  in  Italy,  aftef 
Waterloo,  301. 

Bagration,  Prince,  164-167. 

Barclay  de  ToUy,  general,  164-167. 

Bautzen,  battle  of,  210. 

Bavaria,  refuses  to  join  the  coalition, 
111  ;  the  Tyrol  annexed  to,  117. 

Beaiiliamais,  Eugene,  Viceroy  of  Italy, 
108 ;  defeats  the  Austrians  in  the 
TjTol,  144  ;  in  the  retreat  from  Mos- 
cow, 185. 

Beauliaruais,  Josephine,  marries  Napo- 
poleou,  2U  ;  character,  20 ;  influence 
over  Napoleon,  21 ;  divorce,  155. 

Beauheu,  general,  24. 

Belgium,  preparations  for  the  campaign 
in,  241 ;  the  allied  forces,  242  ;  Napo- 
leon's plans,  242,  248 ;  crosses  the 
Sambre,  248 ;  movements  of  the  aUies, 
249-252 ;  Saint  Amand  and  Ligny,  253, 
254  ;  Quatre  Bras,  255-257  ;  the  Prus- 
sian retreat  after  Ligny,  261,  262  ;  Wa- 
terloo, 271-283  ;  review  of  the  cam- 
paign, 285-292. 

Benningsen,  general,  129. 

Beresiua,  passage  of  the,  187-191. 

Bemadotte,  marshal,  115,  127. 

Bernard,  Prince,  of  Saxe-Weimar,  248. 

Bertrand  order,  the,  263,  329-337. 

Bliicher,  marshal,  urges  the  Saxons  to 
revolt,  204  ;  his  army  in  Belgium  de- 
feated, 242  ;  at  Ligny,  253  ;  unliorsed 
at  Ligny,  265  ;  retires  to  Wavre,  268  ; 
promises  Wellington  assistance,  271  ; 
joins  Wellington,  280  ;  shows  the  real 
soldier  spirit,  284. 

Bonaparte,  Jerome,  made  King  of  West- 
phalia, 130  ;  Napoleon's  letter  to,  132. 

Bonaparte,  Joseph,  King  of  Naples,  136; 
King  of  Spain,  137. 

Bonai)arte,   Napoleon,   at   Brienne,   12 ; 
military  enthusiasm,  12  ;  an  accurate 
student,  13  ;  love  of  detail  and  exact- 
ness,   13 ;    at  Toulon,   14  ;    appointed 
general  of  brigade,  l5 ;   not  a  harsh 
man,  16 ;    quells  insurrection  of   the 
Sections  of  Paris,  19 ;   marriage,  20 
in  command  of  the  army  of  Italy,  21 
plan  of  the  Italian  campaigns,  22,  23 
at  the  Bridge  of  Lodi,  24,  27  ;  enters 
Milan,  24 ;  defeats  Wurmser,  24 :  mili 


342 


INDEX. 


tary  reputation,  26 ;  at  Areola,  27  ;  idol 
of  the  army,  27  ;  departui-e  for  Egypt, 
31 ;  return,  41 ;  his  popularity,  42  ; 
overturns  the  Directory,  43  ;  not  a 
destroyer  of  French  liberties,  46  ; 
chosen  First  Consul,  47  ;  reorganiza- 
tion of  the  government,  47  ;  desires 
peace,  48 ;  war  resimied  with  Aus- 
tria, 49  ;  his  plan,  51 ;  his  army,  52  ; 
crosses  the  Alps,  53 ;  enters  Milan, 
54 ;  at  Marengo,  56  ;  a  characteristic 
campaign,  57  ;  audacity,  58 ;  incurred 
unnecessary  hazard  in  Marengo  cam- 
paign, 59 ;  compared  with  Moreau,  59  ; 
JJanfrey's  criticism,  60  ;  opposed  by 
jacobins  and  royalists,  62  ;  plots 
against  his  Ufe,  65  ;  Georges'  scheme, 
66-70  ;  orders  seizure  of  the  Due 
d'Enghien,  71,  72  ;  did  Napoleon  com- 
mit a  counter-assassination  ?  73-87  ; 
kindness  to  Moreau,  88 ;  share  in 
forming  the  Code  Napoleon,  91-94 ; 
domestic  poUcy,  89-98 ;  the  Concor- 
dat, 94  ;  blamed  for  his  part  in  reor- 
ganizuig  Germany,  100  ;  Emperor  of 
the  French  and  King  of  Italy,  107  ; 
projected  invasion  of  England,  108- 
110  ;  campaign  of  1805,  111  ;  captures 
Ulm,  112 ;  enters  Vienna,  112  ;  peace 
offers,  112;  the  Prussian  envoy,  114; 
Austerlitz,  114-117 ;  peace  of  Pres- 
burg,  117  ;  his  success  a  gain  for 
European  progress,  119  ;  estabUshes 
Confederation  of  the  Rliine,  120  ;  Pro- 
tector of  the  Confederation,  120 ;  war 
with  Prussia,  126  ;  Jena,  126-128  ;  con- 
quest of  Prussia,  128  ;  winterquarters 
at  Warsaw,  129  ;  Eylau,  129  ;  peace  of 
Tilsit,  129 ;  introduces  the  Code  into 
Westphalia,  131  ;  letter  to  Jerome, 
133 ;  better  government  the  need  of 
Europe,  133 ;  desires  a  consolidation 
of  the  German  states,  134 ;  not  justi- 
fied in  dethroning  the  Spanish  Bour- 
bons, 136  ;  did  not  understand  the 
Spanish  people,  137  ;  proper  course 
toward  Spain,  140 ;  invasion  of  Spain, 
140  ;  departure  for  Paris,  140 ;  war 
with  Austria,  141 ;  enters  Vienna,  142  ; 
at  the  island  of  Lobau,  143,  144  ;  Wa- 
gram,  145-149  ;  peace  of  Vienna,  149 ; 
the  succession,  152-154 ;  divorces  Jo- 
sephine, 155  ;  marriage  to  Maria 
Louisa,  and  birth  of  a  son,  155 ;  pros- 
pects of  the  Empire,  155  ;  accepts  the 
Russian  challenge,  162  ;  preparations 
for  the  campaign,  163 ;  welcome  at 
Wihia,  163 ;  Smolensk,  168-170  ;  Boro- 
dino, 172,  173 ;  refuses  to  put  in  the 
Guard,  173  ;  a  terrible  mistake,  174  ; 
arrival  at  Moscow,  175 ;  burning  of 
the  city,  177  ;  retreat  unavoidable, 
178  ;  weakness  shown  in  delaying  the 
retreat,  180;  discipline  of  the  army 
impaired,  182  ;  Malo-Jaroslawetz,  183 ; 
the  retreat  commenced,  184  ;  terrible 
losses,  184  ;  Krasnoi,  185  ;  "  a  day  of 
honor,"  186  ;  passage  of  the  Beresina, 
187-191 ;  arrival  at  Paris,  192  ;  machi- 
nations of  the  powers  against,  in  1813, 


200-202 ;  prepares  for  the  campaign, 
202,  208,  209  ;  Spanish  poUcy,  206, 
207  ;  Liitzen,  210 ;  Bautzen,  210  ;  the 
Austrian  demands,  211-214 ;  his  scat- 
tered army,  215,  216  ;  regards  the  war 
as  a  game,  217  ;  France  invaded,  218  ; 
fall  of  the  Empire,  219  ;  his  pohcy 
condemned,  221 ;  abdication,  222 ;  ex- 
Ued  to  Elba,  224  ;  the  mistake  of  the 
allies,  232  ;  a  hero  in  exile,  232 ;  the 
return  from  Elba,  233  ;  his  welcome, 
234 ;  enters  Paris,  234 ;  reception  by 
his  marshals.  234,  235 ;  policy  of  peace 
and  reform,  235 ;  messages  of  amity 
to  the  powers,  235 ;  declared  against 
by  the  Congress  of  Vienna,  235  ;  com- 
binations against,  236  ;  undertakes  to 
meet  the  demands  of  the  liberal  party, 
237 ;  proclaims  a  new  constitution, 
237  ;  attitude  of  the  Chambers,  238, 
239 ;  neglects  to  identify  his  cause 
with  that  of  France,  240  ;  plan  for  in- 
vading Belgium,  242,  248 ;  his  army, 
243  ;  his  officers,  243-246  ;  refuses 
Davout  permission  to  take  the  field, 
245  ;  proclamation  to  the  army,  247  ; 
crosses  the  Sambre,  248  ;  Ligny,  253, 
254 ;  his  last  victory,  255  ;  neglect  to 
ascertain  the  direction  of  the  Prussian 
retreat,  261,  262,  285  ;  his  careless 
confidence,  262 ;  orders  Grouchy  to 
pursue  the  Prussians,  263 ;  ought  to 
have  attacked  WeUington  at  Quatre 
Bras,  265 ;  Grouchy's  despatch,  266, 
267 ;  the  consequence  of  trusting 
Grouchy,  271 ;  had  a  better  army  than 
his  opponent  at  Waterloo,  271 ;  delay 
in  commencing  the  action,  272  ;  reli- 
ance on  Grouchy,  272;  assault  on 
Hougoumont,  273 ;  tries  to  turn  Wel- 
lington's left,  273  ;  failure,  274  ;  fight- 
ing a  double  battle,  275 ;  should  have 
acted  on  the  defensive,  280 ;  the  last 
charge  of  the  Guard,  281 ;  the  flight 
of  the  army,  282 ;  he  quits  the  field, 
283 ;  his  fatal  mistakes,  285,  286 ;  ar- 
rival in  Paris,  293 ;  abdication,  294 ; 
surrenders  himself  to  the  British  gov- 
ernment, 295 ;  exiled  to  St.  Helena,  295 ; 
his  life  there,  296 ;  treatment  by  the 
English  government,  296 ;  his  narra- 
tives of  his  campaigns,  297, 298 ;  death, 
298  ;  burial,  299 ;  erroneous  view  of,  by 
liberal  writers,  302 ;  estimate  of,  304, 
305 ;  charge  of  selfishness,  306  ;  his 
character  and  his  acts,  307  ;  his  occa- 
sional severities,  309  ;  his  Iiold  on  liis 
soldiers,  310  ;  anecdotes,  311-315 ;  trib- 
ute from  his  German  soldiers,  315 ; 
his  tactics  in  his  later  campaigns 
criticised  by  Marmont,  325. 

Borodino,  battle  of,  171-173. 

Bourbon  plots  against  Napoleon,  67-71. 

Bourbons,  the,  restoration  of,  225 ;  after 
Waterloo,  299. 

Bourtourlin,  colonel,  174. 

Bnmswick,  Duke  of,  126,  128,  247. 

Billow,  general,  247,  249. 

Buonaparte,  on  Freeman's  use  of  the 
name,  338. 


INDEX. 


843 


Cambac^res,  consul,  47. 

Cauipo  Foruiio,  treaty  of,  25. 

Caraccioli,  admiral,  executed  by  Nelson, 
37,  300. 

Cliamber  of  Deputies,  convened  by  Nar 
poleon,  237. 

Chambraj-'s  statistics  of  the  war  with 
Russia,  32G. 

Charles,  Archduke,  25 ;  at  Wagram, 
145-149. 

Charles  IV.  of  Spain,  137. 

Chesney,  C.  C,  quoted,  330,  332,  335-337. 

Cisalpine  RepubUc,  20. 

CoaUtion  of  1S05,  causes  of,  108. 

Code  Napoleon,  4li ;  Napoleon's  share 
in  forming,  91-93 ;  its  utihty,  94  ;  in- 
troduced into  the  German  states,  120  ; 
into  Westphalia,  131  ;  into  Naples,  134. 

Confederation  of  the  Rhine,  120. 

Congress  of  Vienna,  declares  against 
Napoleon,  235  ;  the  allied  sovereigns' 
distrust  of  Napoleon,  236. 

Constitutional  party  in  France,  237,  238. 

Consulate,  the,  47  ;  the  beginning  of  the 
Empire,  62  ;  jacobin  and  royaUst  op- 
position to,  62-C5 ;  Enghsli  attacks 
on,  69 ;  reforms  of  the  Consular  gov- 
ernment, 89  ;  Lanfrey's  criticism,  89  ; 
the  Code  Napoleon  its  most  important 
measure,  91. 

Continental  System,  the,  151. 

Convention  of  Paris,  295 ;  WelUngton  al- 
lows it  to  be  violated  by  the  king,  299. 

Czai-toriski,  Coimt,  322,  323. 

Danube,  passage  of,  142-144. 

D'Artois,  Comte,  favors  Georges' 
scheme,  67. 

Davout,  marshal,  115;  at  Auerstadt, 
127,  128;  made  Duke  of  Auerstadt, 
128  ;  entry  into  Berlin,  128  ;  at  Smo- 
len.sk,  166;  Minister  of  War,  245; 
wishes  to  take  the  field,  245;  Napo- 
leon refuses  to  permit  him  to  serve, 
245 ;  surrenders  Paris,  295. 

Defeat,  Waterloo  a  synonym  for,  283. 

D'Erlon,  general,  243,  244;  at  Quatre 
Bras,  255,  256,  335, 336. 

Desaix,  general,  at  Marengo,  56. 

Directory,  tlie,  established,  19 ;  emip 
d'etat  of  1797,  29 ;  despotic  rule  of,  30, 
40 ;  impopularity,  39  ;  quarrels  with 
tlie  United  States,  39 ;  a  transitory 
pliase  of  the  Revolution,  39  ;  its  singu- 
lar position  in  1799,  39 ;  composed  of 
insignificant  men,  40  ;  existing  on  suf- 
ferance, 42 ;  overturned  by  Napoleon, 
43. 

Divine  right  of  kings,  2. 

Eckmlihl,  action  at,  142. 

Elba,  Napoleon's  exile  to,  224 :  an  un- 
wise thing,  224  ;  his  return  from,  233. 

Eg}T)t,  expedition  to,  projected,  30  ;  ob- 
ject, 31 ;  an  act  of  folly,  31  :  sailing  of 
the  expedition,  31  ;  return,  49. 

Empire,  the,  the  Consulate  its  begin- 
ning, 62 ;  demanded  by  the  people, 
90 ;  its  meaning,  98 ;  its  aggrandize- 
ment a  cause  of  alarm,  156,  157  ;  its 


extension  a  result  of  the  defeat  of  the 
coalitions,  236  ;  effect  of  its  fall,  241. 

England,  assists  French  royalists,  64 ; 
supports  Bourbon  schemes  against  Na- 
poleon's hfe,  68-71 ;  breaks  the  peace 
of  Amiens,  108  ;  Napoleon's  projected 
invasion  of,  108-1 10 ;  in  alliance  with 
Russia,  108 ;  continues  the  war  after 
peace  of  Presburg,  121 ;  motives  in 
opposing  Napoleon,  121 ;  effect  of  the 
continental  wars  on,  151  ;  uninter- 
mitted  hostility  to  France,  207  ;  Napo- 
leon's mistake,  207  ;  part  in  the  Wa- 
terloo  campaign,  241 ;  Napoleon  sur- 
renders to  the  British  government, 
295;  treatment  of  Napoleon  at  St. 
Helena,  296. 

Enghien,  Due  d',  suspected  of  compli- 
city in  the  plot  against  Napoleon,  69  ; 
arrest  at  Ettenheim  in  Baden,  72 ; 
trial  and  execution,  72  ;  charges 
against  Napoleon,  72  ;  the  arrest  justi- 
fiable, 74 ;  proceedings  of  the  court- 
martial,  75-77 ;  who  composed  the 
court,  75 ;  the  official  records  stolen, 
75 ;  the  duke's  avowals,  76,  77 ;  the 
com-t  had  no  choice  but  to  condemn 
him,  77  ;  why  was  he  tried  ?  78 ;  the 
evidence  in  his  papers,  78-84 ;  Napo- 
leon examines  them,  80 ;  questions 
based  on  their  contents,  80 ;  their 
contents,  81 ;  Count  Miot  de  MeUto's 
statement,  82 ;  the  duke  desires  an 
interview  with  the  First  Consul,  83; 
his  hurried  trial  and  execution,  84 ; 
the  First  Consul  astounded,  85 ;  who 
was  responsible,  86. 

Esslmg,  battle  of,  143. 

Europe,  prior  to  the  French  Revolution, 
2-6 ;  ruled  in  the  interest  of  privi- 
leged classes,  2  ;  improvement  in  the 
condition  of  the  people,  5 ;  govern- 
ment by  the  people  impracticable,  5  ; 
the  need  of,  5  ;  nature  of  the  contest 
in,  32 ;  shown  by  the  Revolution  of 
Naples,  34 ;  benefited  by  war  of  1805, 
119 ;  condition  in  1809,  150 ;  griev- 
ances against  Napoleon  in  1813,  199- 
207  ;  after  Waterloo,  299-302. 

Eylau,  battle  of,  129. 

Ferdinand  FV.,  of  Naples,  declares  war 
agauist  France,  33 ;  is  defeated,  34 ; 
breach  of  faith  toward  France,  135 ; 
banishment,  135. 

Finland,  annexed  to  Russia,  322. 

Fleurus,  action  at,  252. 

France,  before  the  Revolution,  4  ;  dur- 
ing the  Revolution,  7-11 ;  vohuiteer 
and  regular  army  of,  12 ;  the  9th  of 
Thermidor,  1794,  18 ;  cliange  in  pub- 
lic opinion,  18 ;  constitution  of  1795, 
19 :  provisions  ensuring  republican 
rule,  19  ;  rising  of  the  Sections,  1795, 
19;  war  with  Austria,  21 -25  ;  the  18th 
of  Fructidor,  1797,  30;  a  deliverer 
from  Middle  Age  barl)ari8ni,  33 ;  on 
the  side  of  progress,  34 ;  French  re- 
verses.  38;  the  18th  of  Brumaire, 
1799,  43 ;  work  of  the  Revolution,  iA, 


344 


INDEX. 


danger  of  the  return  of  the  Bourbons, 
45  ;  the  coup  iVetat  hailed  with  joy, 
46 ;  the  three  Consuls,  47 ;  war  with 
Austria  resumed,  49 ;  French  peas- 
ants' regard  for  the  republic,  63 ;  in  a 
state  of  administrative  disorder,  90  ; 
work  of  the  Consulate,  90 ;  the  Code 
Napoleon,  91  ;  the  Concordat,  94 ;  the 
Empire  established,  90 ;  peace  of  Lu- 
n6vUle,  99;  territorial  acquisitions, 
99 ;  influence  in  reorganizing  Ger- 
many, 99,  100 ;  the  coalition  of  1805, 
lOS  ;  cause  of  the  coalition,  108 ;  Ger- 
man allies,  111 ;  peace  of  Presburg, 
117,  121  ;  war  with  Prussia,  126 ;  peace 
of  Vienna,  149 ;  war  with  Russia  im- 
pending, 158 ;  peace  negotiations,  160 ; 
expected  to  act  on  the  defensive  in 
the  Russian  campaign,  162 ;  fall  of 
the  Empire,  219 ;  the  allied  army  in 
Paris,  220 ;  weary  of  Napoleon,  220 ; 
his  policy  condemned,  221 ;  restora- 
tion of  t]ie  Bourbons,  224  ;  a  doubtful 
future,  225  ;  Louis  XVIII.,  225 ;  a 
dissatisfied  people,  226,  227 ;  the  re- 
turned emigrants,  228,  229  ;  difficul- 
ties of  the  new  kingdom,  230 ; 
grounds  for  discontent,  231  ;  Napo- 
leon's return,  233  ;  a  complete  revolu- 
tion, 235 ;  right  to  choose  her  own 
form  of  government,  236  ;  prepares  to 
maintain  the  right,  237,  239 ;  public 
enthusiasm,  238 ;  the  constitutional 
party,  238  ;  the  need  of  France,  240 ; 
after  Waterloo,  293  ;  Napoleon's  abdi- 
cation, 294  ;  a  provisional  government 
established,  294 ;  but  does  not  obtain 
recognition,  294;  the  convention  of 
Paris,  295 ;  Louis  XVIII.  resumes  the 
throne,  295 ;  vindictive  action  of  the 
Bourbons,  299 ;  the  convention  vio- 
lated by  the  king,  299-301. 

Francis  I.,  of  Austria,  unsatisfactory 
answer  to  Napoleon's  peace  overtures, 
48. 

Frasnes,  248,       , 

Freeman,  E.  A.,  criticism  on  his  use  of 
the  name  "  Buonaparte,"  338. 

French  Revolution :  see  Revolution. 

Friedland,  battle  of,  129. 

Fyffe's  "  Modern  Europe  "  quoted,  101, 
102. 

Genoa,  Massena  besieged  in,  51. 

George  III.,  of  England,  reply  to  Napo- 
leon's peace  overtures,  48. 

Georges  Cadoudal's  scheme  to  murder 
the  First  Consul,  G6  ;  the  conspirators 
aided  by  the  Bourbon  princes,  68  ; 
and  by  the  British  government,  68 ; 
arrest  of  the  conspirators,  68  ;  execu- 
tion, 88. 

Gi^rard,  general,  243,  270. 

Germany,  Moreau's  campaign  in,  50,  51  ; 
French  influence  in  reorganizing,  99, 
100,  102 ;  Rhenish  provinces  annexed 
to  France,  99 ;  a  popular  measure, 
103  ;  the  wisdom  of  the  measure, 
107  ;  campaign  of  1805  in.  111  ;  state 
of    vrastem   Germany   in    1815,   241 ; 


Waterloo  a  check  to  liberal  ideas  In, 
301. 

Great  man  theory  of  history,  320,  321. 

Great  St.  Bernard  pass,  52. 

Grouchy,  marshal,  244  ;  ordered  to  pur- 
sue the  Prussians  after  Ligny,  263  ;  at 
Gembloux,  266  ;  despatch  to  Napoleon, 
266,  267 ;  learns  that  the  Prussians 
are  at  Wavro,  268  ;  proposes  going  to 
Sart  k  Walhaim,  268  ;  his  true  course, 
268,  269 ;  delay  m  starting,  209 ;  re- 
fuses to  march  to  the  sound  of  the 
cannon,  269  ;  his  useless  march,  270  ; 
Napoleon's  reliance  on,  272 ;  respon- 
sibility for  liis  own  conduct,  286; 
Soult's  despatches  to,  287-291 ;  did  not 
influence  his  movements,  289 ;  learns 
of  the  Emperor's  defeat,  292 ;  joins 
the  wreck  of  the  main  army,  292  ;  con- 
troversy on  Grouchy's  responsibility 
for  the  loss  of  Waterloo,  329-337. 

Hamilton,  Lady,  36,  37. 

Hamilton,  Sir  William,  36. 

Haugwitz,  Prussian  envoy,  124. 

HiU,  Lord,  247. 

Hohenlinden,  battle  of,  51. 

Hohenlohe,  Prince,  120,  128. 

Holy  Alliance,  the,  301. 

Hougoumont,  Wellington's  position  at, 

272  ;  attack  on,  273. 
House  of  Peers,  convened  by  Napoleon, 

237. 
Huliu,  brigadier-general,  75. 

Italy,  prior  to  the  French  Revolution,  4 ; 
Napoleon's  campaigns  in,  22-25 ;  what 
the  advent  of  the  French  meant  to, 
25 ;  campaign  of  the  First  Consul,  51 ; 
the  Austrian  situation  in,  55  ;  becomes 
a  kingdom,  107  ;  Venice  annexed  to, 
117  ;  state  of,  in  1815,  241. 

Jacobin  opposition  to  Napoleon,  62. 

Jaffa,  execution  of  prisoners  at,  309. 

J(5na,  battle  of,  127,  128. 

John,  Archduke,  51,  145. 

Jomini,  general,  187. 

Junot's  inaction  at  Valoutina,  169. 

Knights  of  the  Empire,  101. 

Konigsberg,  fall  of,  129. 

Koutousof,  Prince,  171  ;  at  Borodino, 
173  ;  his  mistake  as  to  the  crossing  of 
the  Beresina,  1S7  ;  proclaims  the  "  de- 
liverance of  Europe,"  198 ;  and  the  dis- 
solution of  the  Confederation  of  the 
Rhine,  204. 

Krasnoi,  Napoleon's  conduct  at,  185. 

Kray,  marshal,  49,  50. 

Lafayette,  a  leader  of  the  constitutional 
party,  238. 

La  Haye  Sainte,  Wellington's  position 
at,  272 ;  French  repulse  at,  274 ;  cap- 
ture of,  by  Ney,  27S. 

Lanfrey,  1,  62,  89,  90,  97,  98. 

Lannes,  marshal,  28 ;  defeats  the  Aus- 
trians  at  Montebello,  54 ;  at  Mareugoj 
56 ;  at  Austerlitii,  115. 


INDEX. 


345 


La  Vend<5e,  G4. 

Lebruii,  consul,  47. 

Legitimacy,  the  cause  of  Europe  in  1813, 
2U2. 

Leipeic,  battle  of,  215. 

Leobeu, 25. 

Liberal  ideas,  France  stands  for,  34. 

Liguy,  battle  of,  253,  25-1;  a  decided 
success  for  Napoleon,  285. 

Lobau,  Count  de,  243  ;  attacked  at 
Plancheuoit,  279  ;  defeated,  283. 

Lobau,  island  of,  142-144. 

Lodi,  bridge  of,  24. 

Losses  iu  the  Russian  campaign,  193, 
194,  320-329. 

Louis  XVIII.,  on  the  throne  of  France, 
225  ;  efforts  to  satisfy  the  people,  22G  ; 
hostility  of  the  army  to,  227  ;  unwise 
measures  of,  228,  229 ;  retires  to  Bel- 
gium, 235  ;  resumes  the  throne,  295. 

Limeville,  peace  of,  62,  99. 

Liitzen,  battle  of,  210. 

Macdonald,  marshal,  196-198. 

Mack,  general,  surrenders  Ulm,  112. 

Malo-Jaroslawetz,  action  at,  183. 

Marengo,  battle  of,  56 ;  moral  effect, 
57 ;  dramatic  character  of  the  cam- 
paign, 57  ;  its  completeuesc  of  design, 
57  ;  its  audacity,  58. 

Maria  Louisa,  of  Austria,  marriage  to 
Napoleon,  155. 

Marmont,  marshal,  criticism  on  Napo- 
leon's tactics  in  his  later  campaigns, 
325. 

MassiJna,  marshal,  28 ;  defeats  Souvorof 
near  Lake  of  Ziu'ich,  38  ;  besieged  iu 
Genoa,  53 ;  at  the  island  of  Lobau, 
143,  144;  created  Prince  of  Essling, 
144  ;  at  Wagram,  146-148. 

Melas,  general,  49,  52-56. 

Melito,  Count  Miot  de,  82. 

Mettemich,  Prince,  211. 

"Midnight  Review,  The,"  by  Von  Zed- 
litz,  317. 

MiUtary  despotism,  the  best  government 
in  time  of  war,  237. 

Moldavia,  annexed  to  Russia,  322. 

MoUendorf,  general,  126,  128. 

Mont  Cenis  pass,  52. 

Mont  St.  Gotliard  pass,  52. 

Montebello,  b.attle  of,  54. 

Moore,  Sir  John,  140. 

Moravia,  112,  113. 

Moreau,  general,  commands  Army  of 
the  Rhine,  49  ;  able  campaign  in  Ger- 
many, 50,  51 ;  routs  Archduke  John 
at  Hohenliuden,  51 ;  character  and 
abilities,  51 ;  exile,  51,  88 ;  and  death, 
51 ;  compared  with  Napoleon,  59  ; 
kindness  of  Napoleon  to,  88. 

Moscow,  Napoleon's  arrival  at,  175, 176  ; 
condition  of  the  army,  170 ;  abandoned 
by  the  inhabitants,  177 ;  burning  of, 
177 ;  an  appalling  catastrophe,  177 ; 
reasons  for  the  retreat,  177,  178 ;  Na- 
poleon's delay,  178-181  ;  activity  of 
tlie  Russians,  181  ;  lack  of  discipline 
in  the  Freucli  army,  182 ;  the  retreat, 
183. 


MliUer,  Niklas,  his  eulogium  on  Napo- 
leon's military  character,  315. 

Murat,  marshal,  responsibility  in  Duo 
d'Knghien's  case,  85 ;  at  Austerlitz, 
114. 

Naples,  misgoverned  by  the  Bourbons, 
33 ;  French  sympathizers  in,  33 ;  Brit- 
ish aid  to  the  court  party,  33;  the 
French  army  welcomed  by  the  better 
classes,  34  ;  abandoned  by  the  French, 
36  ;  Nelson  sets  aside  the  capitulation, 
30  ;  remonstrances  of  the  English  cap- 
tains, 37 ;  Bourbon  breach  of  faith, 
135 ;  the  Bourbons  banished,  135 ; 
Joseph  Bonaparte  made  king,  130 ;  ef- 
fect of  liis  rule,  136. 

National  Convention,  18. 

Nelson,  Lord,  at  Naples,  36,  37. 

Ney,  marshal,  at  Borodino,  172  ;  joins 
the  army  in  Belgiiuu,  244  ;  at  Frasues, 
248 ;  ordered  to  occupy  Quatre  Bras, 
252 ;  battle  of  Quatre  Bras,  255-257 ; 
why  he  did  not  occupy  Quatre  Bras, 
250-258 ;  captures  La  Haye  Sainte, 
278 ;  trial  and  execution,  299  ;  on  his 
employment  of  the  cavalry  of  the 
Guard  at  Waterloo,  338. 

NUe,  battle  of  the,  38. 

Orange,  Prince  of,  247. 

Orcha,  186. 

Ott,  general,  55. 

Oudmot,  general,  182,  187,  188,  190. 

Paris,  surrender  of,  219 ;  Davout  charged 
with  its  defence,  245 :  situation  in, 
after  the  battle  of  Waterloo,  293; 
surrendered  by  Davout,  295. 

Parthenop;pan  Republic,  36. 

Picton,  Sir  Thomas,  247 ;  death,  274. 

Piedmont  annexed  to  France,  99. 

Pitt,  William,  and  the  coalition  of  1805, 
123. 

Planchenoit,  action  at,  279. 

Polish  question  and  the  Russian  war, 
321-324. 

Political  theorists,  104. 

Presburg,  peace  of,  117. 

Privileged  classes  in  Europe,  2. 

Prussia,  in  1789,  3;  the  campaign  of 
1805,  113,  123,  124;  reasons  for  not 
joining  the  coalition,  123 ;  alliance 
with  Russia,  124 ;  hostile  feeling  to- 
ward France,  124,  125;  position 
among  the  nations,  125 ;  declares  war, 
12(; ;  suffers  defeat  at  Jena,  128  ;  con- 
quest of,  128 ;  territorial  changes,  130 ; 
ally  of  France  in  the  Russian  cam- 
paign, 163  ;  hopes  to  profit  by  French 
disasters,  195 ;  grievances  against 
France,  199:  duplicity,  203;  war 
preparations,  203 ;  takes  part  in  cam- 
paign of  1815,  241. 

Quatre  Bras,  Wellington  concentrates 
liis  troops  at,  251  ;  Ney's  attack  on, 
255-257  ;  a  staff  officer's  blunder,  250- 
260 :  b.ittle  of,  not  a  French  defeat, 
257  ;  effect  of  the  fight,  258. 


3-46 


INDEX. 


R(5al.  councillor,  80,  81,  S4,  85. 

Reigu  of  Terror,  8,  18. 

Reille,  geueral,  243,  244. 

Revolution,  French,  Europe  prior  to,  2- 
6  ;  based  on  the  rights  of  man,  7  ;  des- 
potism in,  7  ;  an  anomaly,  8 ;  its  ne- 
cessity, 8 ;  did  not  give  the  people 
political  power,  9 ;  their  gain  in  lib- 
erty and  equality,  9  ;  not  a  rose-water 
revolution,  9  ;  losses  of  the  privileged 
classes  by,  10 ;  their  hostility,  10 ;  be- 
ginning of  a  new  order,  10 ;  "  an  irre- 
pressible conflict,"  11 ;  work  of,  44. 

Rivoli,  action  of,  25. 

Robespierre,  15 ;  downfall,  18. 

Roman  Catholic  Chvirch  in  France,  94- 
96. 

Rostopchin,  Count,  governor  of  Mos- 
cow, 177. 

Royalist  opposition  to  Napoleon,  62,  64, 
65. 

Ruffo,  Cardinal,  36. 

Russia,  prior  to  the  French  Revolution, 
3  ;  aids  Austria  in  1799,  38 ;  joins  Eng- 
land against  France,  108 ;  seeks  a 
pretext  for  war  (1810),  159 ;  prepara- 
tions, 159;  Napoleon  welcomed  at 
Wilna,  163  ;  the  Russian  armies,  164 ; 
military  manceuvres,  1G5-168 ;  Smo- 
lensk, 166  ;  Borodino,  171-173  ;  burn- 
ing of  Moscow,  177  ;  Napoleon's  re- 
treat from  Moscow,  183-193 ;  end  of 
the  campaign,  193  ;  losses  in  the  cam- 
paign, 193,  195 ;  Koutousof's  procla- 
mafion,  198 ;  Polish  question  and  the 
Russian  war,  321-324. 

Saint  Amand,  action  at,  253,  254. 

St.  Helena,  Napoleon's  exile  to,  295 ;  his 
life  there,  296. 

Sardinia  absorbed  by  Austria,  51 

Sart  4  Walhain,  Grouchy's  useless  march 
to,  269,  270,  332. 

Savary,  colonel,  commaoding  at  castle 
of  Vincennes,  75 ;  report  of  Due  d'En- 
ghien's  reply  to  the  court,  76,  77 ;  not 
responsible  for  the  prompt  execution 
of  d'Enghien,  86. 

Schmettau,  general,  128. 

Schwartzenberg,  Prince,  181,  198. 

Scott,  Sir  Walter,  1;  "Life  of  Napo- 
leon "  cited,  69. 

Sections  of  Paris  Insurrection  put  down 
by  Bonaparte,  19,  29. 

Shaw-Kennedy,  Sir  James,  on  Grouchy's 
responsibility  for  loss  of  Waterloo, 
333,334. 

Smith,  Spencer,  intrigues  of,  71. 

Smolensk,  168, 169,  184. 

Soult,  marshal,  114, 115 ;  chief  of  staff  in 
Waterloo  campaign,  246,  261. 

Souvorof,  general,  in  Italy,  38 ;  defeated 
by  Mass^na,  38. 

Bpaiu,  backwardness  of,  5 ;  under  Bour- 
bon rule,  134;  Napoleon's  treatment 
of  the  Spanish  Bourbons,  135 ;  his 
mistaken  view  of  the  people,  136 ;  his 
reforms  not  welcomed,  137  ;  the  pa- 
triotic feeling  in,  138 ;  Joseph  Bon.v 
parte's  ill-success  in  goveruiug,  138; 


the  new  system  rejected,  130 ;  in- 
vaded by  Napoleon,  140 ;  lustory  since 
1814,  139 ;  the  Spanish  war,  206,  207. 

Spencer,  Herbert,  the  "  Great-Mau-The- 
ory  of  History,"  309-311. 

Stein,  Baron,  101. 

Tcliitchagoff,    admiral,    181,    187,    188, 

190. 
Thiers,  L.  A.,  1. 
TUsit,  Peace  of,  129,  130. 
Toulon,  siege  of,  14. 
Trafalgar,  battle  of,  110. 
"Two  Grenadiers,  The,"  by  Heine,  316. 
Tyrol,  ceded  to  Bavaria,  117. 

trim,  capture  of.  111,  112. 

United  States,   the  Directory  quarrels 

witli,  39. 
Uxbridge,  Lord,  247. 

Vandamnie,  general,  243 ;  and  the  cap- 
tain, 312-314. 

Venice,  ceded  to  Kingdom  of  Italy, 
117. 

Victor,  marshal,  at  Marengo,  56 ;  in  the 
retreat  from  Moscow,  188,  190. 

Vienna,  Congress  of,  declares  against 
Napoleon,  235. 

Wagram,  battle  of,  145-149. 

Wallachia,  annexed  to  Russia,  322. 

War,  a  game  of  hazard,  60. 

War,  causes  for,  in  1810,  156-158. 

Warsaw,  Grand  Duchy  of,  created,  130 ; 
evacuated  by  the  French,  198 ;  occu- 
pied by  the  Russians,  198  ;  the  Russian 
designs  on,  in  1810-11,  322,  323. 

Wartensleben,  general,  128. 

Waterloo,  battle  of,  271 ;  the  two  armies, 
271  ;  Wellington's  position,  272 ;  Na- 
poleon's delay  in  commencing  the 
action,  272;  attack  on  Hougoumont, 
273  ;  the  attack  a  faUure,  274 ;  Freucli 
repulse  at  La  Haye  Sainte,  274 ;  ap- 
proach of  the  Prussians,  275 ;  a  double 
battle,  275 ;  faUui-e  of  the  cavalry  at- 
tacks, 275  ;  losses  of  the  English,  277  ; 
capture  of  La  Haye  Sainte,  278 ;  ar- 
rival of  the  Prussians,  280 ;  the  French 
outnumbered,  280 ;  Napoleon  should 
have  taken  the  defensive,  280 ;  the 
Guard  attacks  the  English  right  cen- 
ti-e,  281;  and  is  di-iven  back,  282; 
Wellington's  advance,  282 ;  rout  of 
the  French  army,  283  ;  Napoleon  quits 
the  field,  2S3 ;  a  sjTionym  for  utter  de- 
feat, 283 ;  discussion  of  the  campaign, 
329-337. 

Wavre,  Bliicher  retires  to,  268 ;  Grou- 
chy's march  on,  269,  270, 329-337. 

WeUington,  Duke  of,  in  Spain,  206 ;  his 
army  in  Belgium,  242,  247 ;  his  offi- 
cers, 247 ;  at  the  Duchess  of  Rich- 
mond's ball,  250 ;  his  idea  of  Napo- 
leon's movements,  250 ;  favored  by 
fortune,  251 ;  concentrates  his  troops 
at  Quatre  Bras,  251 ;  saved  bj'  a  blim- 
der,  259 ;  agrees  to  fight  at  Waterloo, 
266 ;  his  army,  271  ;  assistance  prom- 


INDEX. 


347 


ised  by  Blucher,  271 ;  acts  on  the  de- 
fensive, 272  ;  his  position,  272 ;  Na- 
poleon tries  to  turn  his  left,  273  ;  his 
critical  situation,  277  ;  loses  La  Haye 
Sainte,  278 ;  reinforced  by  Bliicher, 
2S0 ;  forces  the  Guard  to  retire,  281 ; 
orders  his  wliole  line  to  advance,  282 ; 
puts  the  Frencli  to  rout,  282 ;  honor 
due  to,  284  ;  allotvs  the  convention  of 
Paris  to  be  violated,  299-301 ;  and  Ney 
to  be  shot,  299  ;  comparison  of  liis  con- 
duct witli  that  of  General  Grant,  299. 
tVestphalia,  Kingdom  of,  created,  130; 
its  constitutiou,  131. 


"  Who  Lost  Waterloo  ?  "  329. 

Wihia,  1G3-1G7,  191-193. 

Wilson,  Sir  Robert,  quoted,   186,   188, 

192. 
Wittgenstein,  Count,  181,  187,  204. 
Wurmser,  general,  24. 
Wlirtemberg,   ally  of    France  in  1S05, 

111. 

Yorck,  Prussian  general,  surrender  of, 
196  ;  an  indefensible  transaction,  19&- 
198. 

Zietheu,  Frussiaa  general,  248, 249. 


Vi\ 


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2002 


12,000(11/95) 


LD  21-100OT-12, '43  (8796s) 


3731^:; 


\\i\ 


^Si5 


UNiVERsnY  OF  CAUFORNIA  UBRARY 


ifim-mm 


\Mf' 


.fi'V 


